The Black Parade
by TalkingElephant
Summary: All things in the past, present and future exist, have existed and will exist due to an initial conceptualization of a thought – an idea, an insight. For me it all started with fear. Pure, unbridled fear. (In which a child is born with imagination so strong it leaks into reality. Eldritch.)
1. The Lazarus Curse

Disclaimer: Naruto belongs to Masashi Kishimoto. However, the OCs do belong to me.

Beta: Angel Wolf

* * *

 **Chapter 1 - The Lazarus Curse**

 _"It is quite true, as some poets said; that the God who created man must have had a sinister sense of humor. He makes him a reasonable being, yet forces him to take this ridiculous posture, driving him with blind craving for this ridiculous performance."_

 ** _D. H. Lawrence_**

* * *

I felt warm in this lonely, dark abyss, floating between the state of consciousness and unconsciousness. It was a bit uncomfortable – and very, very strange. I knew not if I was breathing, I could not see anything, but I did hear my own heartbeat: a reminder that I was alive.

Huh . . . ? How odd.

I was sure that I had died. Quiet sure.

. . .

Time passed, I did not know how long – months, even years perhaps – and I became used to this . . . 'residency' of mine.

I tried to move my limbs, it was a difficult feat to achieve when one was in my position. I only managed to slightly move my feet, they bumped into something solid.

I heard sounds at the action, of a man and a woman. The sounds were muffled, akin to sounding like faint vibration rather than distinct words. I felt like . . . No, I _knew_ that they were talking to me. Although I could not understand what they were saying, their voice felt strangely soothing for my ears – warm, familiar, and gentle – like how I imagined parents would.

I began to conjure a theory about what had happened. I thought about various possibilities and impossibilities, ranging from something mild to something completely outrageous.

Time slipped away from me altogether, I had no idea how much had passed.

How many ideas had I entertained by now? Thousands, probably.

However, my mind settled on one thing only.

Reincarnation.

At first I felt a bit shocked and disturbed. The skeptical part of me was unwilling to accept an illogical notion. However, the intuitive side, the part which felt curious about the possibilities and the adventures that would await me, was exited with the prospect of a clean slate.

Perhaps this time I could pursue my dream without the pressure and expectations that I had to previously endure. Perhaps this time, I could be whoever I wanted to be.

My lips curled into a grin.

Unlike other times when I'd slept with weariness baring down upon me, this time I slept in anticipation.

* * *

More time had passed, and before I knew it, the walls around me were contracting – once every five to thirty minutes if I counted correctly – and it continued for another five grueling hours.

The contraction then gradually increased in frequency, before it became very intense. These walls were closing in on me. I heard sounds then, not quite muffled anymore. They came from outside this bubble I was engulfed in, it was of a woman screaming in pain.

Every time the walls contracted, the woman would wail, crying out.

After that, I felt squeezed, pushed to an unknown destination.

I knew what was about to transpire and I felt giddy.

It was my birth.

My second birth, actually.

The labor went on for about an hour before I was finally free from my 'containment'. I felt cold air brush against my body. However, I did not breath – could not, actually – something was obscuring my mouth and nose.

It was a mixture of ammonia and mucus, I believe. It was suctioned not a second later, wiped away by someone.

I took a big gulp of air, as big as I could. It was strange that such a simple action as breathing could feel so heavy.

It was almost like the air I inhaled was not enough.

Was there a complication?

I opened my eyes to observe my surroundings, trying to find any indication of birth defect. My vision was blurry, the farthest that I could see was only twelve inches ahead of me, but I could still perceive lights, motions, and shapes. This is normal for a newborn, thus I was not unnecessarily worried.

I saw the midwife talk to someone, to a voice that I recognized as my male progenitor, in a language that I understood as Japanese. Her words were a bit jumbled for my ears, but I could still understand the general context – it was about me, I believe.

Among the gibberish they sprouted, I could only understand one word: Uchiha.

Wait, what . . . ? Uchiha – as in Sasuke Uchiha? The Naruto character.

The series had gotten huge back a while ago, I knew enough of it.

That was mostly thank to this little boy, an old patient of mine. He was a big fan. I remembered how he brought his comic books with him to the hospital, toddling around with his small feet. I'd promised him I would bring the newest volume, even read it to him, if he promised me just one thing. I needed him to get better. He needed to recover.

He did not.

My throat swelled as my eyes watered, blurring further, but when I focused up, I saw a faint outline of the Uchiha fan. It was stitched to the man's shirt.

He must've been a very dedicated otaku, I believe that's what they were called. I thought, proven by the great length he was willing to go to imitate a man-made concept, he was certainly obsessed. Unfortunately, as impressed as I was, even I had to admit that the man's behavior was a tad bit zealous.

Did the man love the manga so much that he was willing to change his own name?

Dedicate his life to live as an imaginary character?

I inwardly wondered if my female progenitor was as . . . _eccentric_. Was she an otaku too? Perhaps a J-Pop enthusiast?

Sweet Sabbath, I know too much about Japanese culture.

My musing was halted when I registered a peculiar feeling. Something was crawling beneath my skin. Something warm. It wasn't quite alive – something ambient. It almost felt like an itch, especially thanks to the prickly sensation it caused. It flowed in a steady current, entwining with my veins. It circulated through my body just like blood.

Was this that energy they used?

What was it called . . .

Chakra?

I immediately scoffed at my own ridiculous train of thought. There was just no way that I could end up in an imaginary world of all places.

 _But you're here, aren't you? What was once a grown man is now a helpless babe. You're not in the position to determine what is possible or not._ My voice of reason kept me grounded in a realm without floors.

I gnawed my bottom lip with my now toothless gum, feeling a bit anxious. Was this some kind of cosmic joke? Perhaps this was the World War II era, and the otaku was not actually an otaku, but a genuine and real person who simply happened to bear the name Uchiha. Perhaps my carrier was exposed to atomic radiation during her pregnancy, thus I came out a bit peculiar.

Yes, yes, yes, that _must_ be it.

I groaned at my ridiculous line of thought.

Now I simply jumped into baseless conclusion.

I closed my eyes to calm myself to try to make some sense to my unfunny predicament. It had always worked splendidly in the past. Imagine my surprise when, by doing so, it was as if a veil had been lifted from my mind, and I saw a completely different world.

It was pitch black, only enlightened by dim, floating energies that were steadily going out brighter. The people in the room became these lights, I fleetingly realized. The nurse that held me was a warm ball of fire, so did the two other people in the room.

However, they lost compared to the otaku-man and his partner.

Their fires were blazing, two powerful torrents that were kept under tight leashes.

These bindings were two human bodies.

Those were definitely auras all right.

I felt my heart skipped a beat as a sense of dread settled at the pit of my stomach.

No.

Just . . . No!

There was something incredibly wrong with this scenario. I was supposed to live an ordinary, safe life within a normal world. This one was definitely _not_ normal – Lord knew it wasn't even real, let alone safe. Sure, my friends and I used to pretend to be a ninja when we were children. Ninja's were in. We ran around and cackled madly as we threw folded papers, made-up as metal stars. It was a fond memory of my childhood.

However, this . . . This was neither funny, nor particularly fun.

As if the idea of existing in a world full of killers wasn't frightening enough, I somehow had ended up in the Uchiha Clan – where someday, in the future, a-scumbag-named-Itachi would massacre. I would be helpless, unable to defend myself against him. It would be the ultimate end, no potential resurrection next time. Well, unless I suddenly woke up as Vegeta or something, but let's not tempt fate here. This _is_ worse enough.

I should've just ordered my coffin now, considering the fact that my survival-chance was nihilistic.

They shouldn't have bothered to conceive me at all, I was already doomed to die from the very start.

Not that they knew that anyway . . . Morons . . .

.

.

.

I don't want to die, I don't want to die, I-don't-want-to-die, Idon'twanttodi–!

Breathe, I told myself. Breathe.

I will not die.

In and out, in and out. Breathe.

I will not die.

Everything was closing in on me. I could feel my breath begin to shake before it grew rapid. Oh god, was I hyperventilating? This was ludicrous.

Blood rushed through my vein, pumping straight into my head, making me feel lightheaded. My chest was burning, and breathing became harsh.

Too caught up inside my head, I could barely make out that I was handed to another person who cut my umbilical cord and cleaned my body. I squirmed in the nurse's grip, trying to escape – to break free from this cursed existence, but my weak and helpless prison would not comply.

"Let me go! Let Me GO! LET ME GO!" I croaked. My screams were incoherent as I thrashed in the nurse's arms.

With bitter, fear-induced rage, I tried harder to free myself. I moved my shoulders and legs wildly. I moved the weak muscles in my neck and pushed them to lift my heavy head. Just as the nurse was about to hand me to my parents, I rolled out of her grip in a sudden bout of stupidity, and leapt into the awaiting embrace of the cold tiled floor.

I heard people scream in the midst of my own terrified fall.

I'm going to die, I realized.

It was then that I felt the foreign energy surge through from my stomach into my eyes, burning and swarming. Time seemed to slow down, as if it was telling me to savor the last second of my life. I plummeted into the floor, nearing a splatter of blood and brain.

However, I never reached that white tile.

My male donor – or dare I say, father – caught me in his arms. His body was set in an odd angle. He was half-kneeling and half-lying on the floor to accommodate my landing. One of his hands supported my neck whilst the other one hooked itself behind my knees. I tilted my head and came face to face with spinning crimson eyes. The man looked horrified, surprised, angry and . . . proud? For some bizarre reason . . .

What? Never seen a suicidal infant before?

As I blinked my eyes, I realized that everything seemed . . . Clearer. When did my baby eyes gain an instant boost of clarity? I could see color: absolutely beautiful energies around me. How strange, even my savior seemed to glow blue, especially his eyes.

…

...

. . .

Oh.

 _Oh._

Oh no, no, no, no, no, no

My blood ran cold with the realization.

No, it couldn't be. I refused to acknowledge it!

I could just imagine my future, my maimed body lying on the ground with empty eye sockets, suffering; bleeding to death–

Okay, perhaps I was getting overdramatic here, wasn't there an afterlife in this stupid series? There had to be a place reserved for the- oh what were they called? Hogie's? Hokaga? Hokage? Yep, that one. Except I wasn't destined to be one. I had to run as soon as I grew able.

I frantically roamed my eyes around the room, trying to find any other possible escape even though I knew that I literally could not run away. As if I wasn't _already_ on the verge of shock-induced cardiac arrest, I then heard the woman cried her husband name: Fugaku, she said.

I barely stifled my manic laugh.

It was just my luck that of all people in this ruined clan, I had to end up with this particular family. I was now officially one part of the most messed up pair of brothers that ever existed. It wasn't like I had dealt with enough psychopaths; headaches to last me for a lifetime. Why not? After all, the crazier – the merrier.

In the midst of my own horror, the only thought that was left on my mind was that I did not want to be a shinobi, or any profession which might require involvement with the former.

I loved my life, thank-you-very-much, I did not need to have it jeopardized simply because of my relation with that bunch.

I would run. I swore I would escape this place, even if it was the last thing I do.

I would not let myself be confined here like a slaughter lamb.

One time was enough, I told myself.

One time _is_ enough.

* * *

 **Thank you for reading this chapter. Thank you for favoriting and following my story. Your reviews, especially, really make my day.**

 **I sincerely want to improve my writing, so all critics are welcomed. If it is possible, please tell me which part you like best and which part you hate, and why.**

 **Check out my other story, 'Iridescent.'**


	2. Requiem Æternam

Disclaimer: Naruto belongs to Masashi Kishimoto. However the OCs do belong to me.

* * *

 _"Days before, at the motel, I had asked myself, What color is the dessert at night? A stupid question, yet somehow I felt it held the key to my future, or perhaps not so much my future as my capacity for suffering."_

 _ **Robert Belaño, Gómez Palacio**_

* * *

I stared at the windows, at the ceiling, and at the door, trying to find something – anything – that could extrude my sleepiness.

This morning I was discharged after my three weeks stay at the hospital, my progenitors immediately took me home into the Uchiha District. I did not pay much attention to the few people that we passed along the way, I really could not muster the will to care, opting to feign sleep. When we arrived in the house, Mikoto took me into what I assumed was the nursery and left me alone in my crib to catch some very needed sleep.

But I could not, or rather, I _would not_. Strange things tended to happen whenever I closed my eyes, I did not know whether I could handle anymore incident from this freakish world.

Sometime after my birth I had fallen asleep – or perhaps fainted, I was not sure either. One moment I was awake and the next I was unconscious. By the time I woke up I was already inside an incubator with electrodes from a cardiopulmonary monitor connected to two either side of my chest and my lower abdomen. A probe to measure my respiratory rate and a cuff to measure my blood pressure were attached to my wrist and foot, respectively, whilst an IV was attached to my other wrist.

I, of course, was baffled by the medics' action. I was a term baby and I did not experience any symptoms that would warrant the need for such thorough observation. Sure, I had needed more time to adjust to my new lungs, which was perfectly understandable since I had to rewire my brain to adapt and learn how to function with such tiny lungs, however it did not mean that I was on the verge of death.

I was wrong.

It was less than an hour later that I began to feel _it_ – that slow drag on my chakra as my reserve slowly depleted, disappearing bit by bit, quite similar to the sensation of donating one's blood; except for a fact that it did not stop.

I observed myself as much as I could with my newly-acquired sharingan without jostling all the wires and the cannulas, however I had absolutely no clue as to where my chakra was disappearing into. I did not know what all of my mitochondria were doing, or how their works somehow interrelated with the chakra in my body. However, with my chakra diminishing, so did the energy that powered my body.

It was then that I began to feel the fatigue. It was like a switch had been flipped and my body's seemed to slow down – automatically entering a power saving mode. It knew that it was tired and I began to drift in and out of consciousness.

The process lasted for what felt like an eternity. The invisible leach kept on consuming my chakra, barely leaving enough energy for my organs to function; always teetering on the edge without outright killing me. Somewhere along the way it started to take even more chakra, so much that the muscles that were supposed to keep my airway open became too weak to do their job, which in turn caused my pharynx to collapse and obstruct the airflow on my upper airway. I had to wear CPAP ever since, at least until yesterday.

I did not know which one terrified me the most, constantly being on the death door without knowing whether I would survive or the fact that my new parents _knew_ about what would happen and let me endured it anyway. I supposed it was kind of them to bring me to the NICU before the incident started, however I would appreciate it more if they simply spared me the pain and put me into a medically induced coma instead of gawking at my suffering.

Even now I still had not figured out what had happened. For all I knew it could be a genetic disorder or a normal occurrence for infants in for this world. I could not confirm it, no one had told me anything.

It made me realize an important thing though, about how much I had taken things for granted. From the simple ability to breathe, to move my limbs, to take a warm shower, to a good cup of tea, to a fresh laundry, to eat solid food, and to watch the sun set instead of a blaring artificial light. Thank God my new parents were rich – or perhaps they simply enchanted the medical personnel with illusions, who knew – I suspected I would have died if I did not receive such an intensive care. But still, what I wouldn't give for a simple walk in the park right now. I could not even remember how the ground beneath my feet was supposed to feel anymore.

My eyelids dropped for the umpteenth time, the aching weight of consciousness once again seeped into my bones.

I really wanted to succumb to my urge to sleep, however I could not shake the thought that if I fell asleep something bad was going to happen. I could not even say that I was being delusional, or perhaps I was just clinging to the hope that everything was only a fragment of my rather elaborate imagination and that I was actually sleeping; or in a coma, perhaps in a mental hospital – anything but _this_.

However, staying awake was not something that was preferable either, my mind quickly reminded. I was just a human, technically _a very young human_ , whose body had to operate with the barest necessities for three whole weeks. I did not know if my organs would suffer from permanent damages, or if there would be any delayed consequences due to undetected internal damages. I needed sleep, I had to so that I could give my body a chance to fix itself.

Thus, I fell asleep. For a moment I was floating, letting go of my worries and headache.

It was dark, until suddenly it was not.

* * *

Thick snow was falling around me, covering buildings and trees of this unfamiliar place. The sky was dark, there were neither clouds nor stars that graced their presence. There was only lone lunar who shone brightly, casting an eerie silver light that illuminated the abandoned town. Cold winds blew, touching the back of my neck and sending thrill of shivers down my spine. I subconsciously wrapped my arms around myself in response. Not that it would make that much of a difference anyway, not with the scrubs I was wearing.

I observed the inhabited place in uneasiness before I went to inspect myself. I was confused with what I saw.

The dark green surgical gown was marred with dark splotch of blood, _my_ blood, originating from a hole in my chest. Out of morbid curiosity, I poked it with my index finger. I strangely felt nothing but numbness. I then moved my free arm and blindly used it to reach a place in my back, accidentally poking a gaping hole in my back.

I stared at the blood on my gloved hand, my agitation returned tenfold.

A faint sound of shovel hitting the ground broke me out of my reverie.

I looked up into the distance.

I did not know why, however, against my will, my limbs began to move into the direction of the sound like a marionette. I stared at my feet with a mixture of horror and fascination. I tried to stop my legs, but they did not obey me. In a short while, I already reached a place which seemed to be a cemetery.

Just as my legs passed the gate, I immediately wrapped my arms around the black iron pole and hang myself there like a leech. However, much to my horror, my legs kept on dragging me inside, pulling on my bones and straining my muscles.

The invincible power tugged me harder and I started to lose my grip. I winced when my joints creaked, slowly breaking under the force of the pull. I dug my nails into the gate and held it tighter.

The match between the foreign force and I continued for some times before it suddenly released its grip on me. My knees gave up and I crumpled to the ground in a heap of limbs.

I suspiciously eyed my feet, still hugging the pole.

I experimentally moved them closer to regain my balance – wincing slightly when sharp pain traveled from my probably dislocated left ankle – thankfully they obeyed me. When my legs remained within my control, I attentively peeled my arms from the pole and sank onto the ground, its coldness seeped uncomfortably into my skin.

Black crusts of paint blended with brown grains of corroding iron clung into the edge of my now naked fingernails, my still gloved palms, my arms and my surgical gown. The sharp coppery tang from the peeled epidermis sneaked into my nostrils, alerting me of the scratches that decorated my forearms. My ankles on the other hand were red, showing the tell-tale of oncoming bruises.

 _I need to get out of here._

I propped my arms against the snow and leaned my weight onto my right side, trying to rise in spite of my trembling fingers and aching ankles. I rolled myself around and used my knees to push myself up. I was about to drag myself away from the place when an invincible claw gripped my ankle, again.

I screamed as I flew across the cemetery and crashed head-first into the ground.

I groaned and shifted my shaking limbs. My hands were twitching, as if going through a spasm. I barely registered the warm droplets that dripped down from my numb skull into my cheek and jaw. I blindly moved my hands and felt something solid brushed my fingertips, a gravestone. I reached it. I gritted my teeth to stifle the sharp pain from my arm, and used it as a leverage to prop myself up.

For a while I simply leaned against it, inwardly apologizing to whoever it was whose grave I was imposing. I rested my cheek on the left side of the grey-white Fleur-de-lis cross, replacing my view from the seemingly endless rows of headstone with that of the side view of the bronze Christ corpus. I traced my finger against it, absentmindedly brushing the snow from the smooth and cold metal. It must have cost a fortune.

I lowered my gaze from the sculpture onto the carved name on the hard marble, onto the only thing that was left of the person who was buried underneath me.

It was _me_ – or at least it was supposed to be me – it had my name written on it.

I tilted my head, I honestly did not expect my gravestone to be that nice. It was possible that my father was the one who commissioned it, but no, the style and the price were too grandiose for the man's taste. It was definitely mother. However, considering how extreme my mother could behave, especially since I did not depart in a good term with her, I would not be surprised if I ended up being cremated with my remains being fed to a dog instead – or flushed down the toilet, whichever suited her fancy.

I wondered what my mother was thinking right now. With my father I was certain. He was probably grieving – mourning. Despite everything, I knew that my dad loved me – or at least tried to. With mother, it was difficult.

Was she disappointed, perhaps angry? It would be understandable, considering that she had to invest her time to raise a child for years and pay for his very expensive education only for said child to end up dead before he could pay for the opportunity and real costs of his long training period.

I sighed heavily and put pressure over my bleeding head, my thoughts were racing a million miles a minute.

I wondered how my patients were doing. I could not help but be convinced that I was a bit of a self-absorbed jerk for only thinking about them _now_ instead of – _oh, I don't know_ – twenty plus days ago. I knew that I spent most days being unconscious, but still, I could not help but feel bad. There was that particularly tricky case of Takayasu arteritis in a young girl presenting with heart failure and femoral pulses and–

"What are you moping about this time?" the voice behind me said, startling me.

I heard it walked closer to me, its joints creaked from disuse. The combined smell of death – pungent and sickening – and sweet scents of different kinds of flowers clung to it, creating a horrific blend.

I maintained the pressure on my forehead whilst my other hand was balled into a fist, ready to defend myself if needed.

"Pretty, isn't it?" it commented offhandedly. My gaze fell to the gravestone. "It's ostentatious, of course, but mother can never resist the urge to be dramatic, can't she?"

It then leaned forward, hunching over my shoulder, its desiccating phalanges slowly traced the carved name.

I kept my eyes straight, not blinking nor moving, trying to conceal how my heart was thundering inside my rib cage. Cadavers were one thing, but a walking dead was way out of my comfort zone.

"You know… there used to be a lot of flowers in here." It dragged its bones to the ground, drawing two largish leaves and cluster of bell-shaped flower. "There were lilies for innocence," it then drew tall flower stem composed of multiple flowers with sword-shaped leaves on its side, "gladiolus for the strength of character, sincerity, and moral integrity; and of course, my personal favorite…" it drew small flowers with geometrical shaped petals and connected them all to a thin rachis, "orchids."

I did not know whether I should smile or frown at their meaning.

"I will always love you," I mumbled.

"How quaint," it remarked. "They never said that while we're alive, no? I mean, look at this," it pointed its finger towards the tiny writings under the carved name which I did not realize were even there, "No farewell words were spoken, no time to say goodbye. You were gone before we knew it, and only God knows why."

I squinted my eyes to read the words, feeling a bit strange. I read it again, over and over, trying to brush away the awful feeling that had only gotten stronger.

"Infuriating, isn't it?" The skeleton expressed, seemingly reading my mind. "I don't know why they even bother with subtlety. They might as well wrote, 'congratulation for dying in a convenient store robbery, dumbass, God knows that you're the only one who can be stupid enough to pull it off'."

"At least the Mass is… nice?" I trailed off, trying to cheer my corpse – err, myself?

"We're buried on the Holy Thursday," it reminded.

"Wait, what?" I averted my eyes to the date that was written on the stone, reaffirming the thing's words. "But why?" If I was buried on Holy Thursday, it would mean I did not have a funeral mass. The Church prohibited the celebration of a funeral Mass on that day. "Can't they wait until Easter Monday?"

The skeleton shrugged, well… as much as it could with decomposing muscles, and plopped down to the ground – perfectly comfortable sitting on its bare bones. "Knowing them, we should have specified it in our will. What can we do about it anyway, what's done is done. Just be grateful that they have us buried."

I disagreed.

"But what about a memorial Mass? There must be a funeral Liturgy, right – at the very least?"

"None."

This was ridiculous.

"Do they even visit you?" There was no need to explain who they were.

"They did visit us a lot – well, mostly just dad," it informed. "Then their visits became rarer and rarer until one day they just..." the thing's shoulders sagged, at lost for words.

"Stopped," I whispered.

"Correct…" It nodded its head. "Perfectly understandable though. It's pointless anyway, it won't ever bring us back," the voice mused. "But still… it would have been nice to have some visitors," it professed. "It's dark in there… very quiet and suffocating…"

I looked at it in concern. I could not decipher what it was thinking, not when there were no twitch of muscles or eyeballs for me to read.

Heaving a sigh, I pressed my knuckles over my closed eyelids. A wave of disappointment soon came crushing. "Christ… that's– that's just sucks."

"It's nothing," it dismissed. "That's just how people are – undependable. In the end, the only one that you can count on is yourself, regardless of where you are in life or who is in it for the time being."

While that might be true, in a sense, I believed that such thoughts were simply impractical in a long run. Human beings were social creatures. They were not only social in the trivial sense that they liked company, and not simply in the obvious sense that they each depended on others. Simply to exist as a normal human being required interaction with other people.

"Don't let this world make you bitter," I said. "Don't let the action of other people turn you cold on the inside. Certain things will hurt us, sure, but don't let those things make you unkind. We are human. We break and we make mistakes. But don't let pain and sadness ruin your life. It's about taking whatever life throws at you and learning from it."

It stared at me. Its jaw twitched, forming an almost pitying smile. "And what then, what would you do when everything becomes too much? When the invisible agony reaches a certain unendurable level – when you can no longer deal with the deaths, the malpractice suits, the sleep deprivation, people who keep on blaming you no matter what? There will be no dangerous neighborhoods to visit, no colleagues you can beg to remove your life support. There's only you and your suffering."

I stared at my red stained gloves. "So they knew then? What I did, I mean – or rather, what I didn't do? Is that why I don't have a funeral Mass?"

"Does it really matter?"

I looked up.

The skeleton had morphed. Its visage contorted into the face of my killer.

The gun's muzzle pressed uncomfortably into my chest.

I closed my eyes. "No."

He pulled the trigger.

* * *

I woke up with a jolt.

I pressed my hand against my chest. There was something… something was moving inside me…

My hands clawed my sternum, forming crescent shaped dents on my reddish skin.

I rolled, I squirmed, I kicked my blankets.

I screamed in frustration when my legs became tangled in them.

I barely cared when a mass of black hair picked me up and sat on the floor, trying to calm me down, making my blankets fell down in the process.

I moved my hands and pushed them against my abdomen, trying to push _it_ out.

The person that was holding me held me tighter and tried to pry my hands away, hindering the procedure.

That would not do.

I let the foreign energy flowed into my eyes and I glared at my captor. The boy, _Sasuke_ , gasped – either in horror or amazement – and his hold momentarily loosen up.

I took advantage of his surprise and rolled myself away from his grip into the floor. I ignored the cold tiles and shove my fingers down my throat, trying to make myself puke.

I started coughing.

I coughed out bloods before I disgorged the breast-milk that I had drunk earlier. I felt the warm putrid sensation in my throat and the bitter taste in my mouth again. My throat was tingling, slightly burning. I felt the bile rose from my throat, there was something solid in there.

I heaved the content of my stomach for one last time before I slumped near my vomit.

Finally _, it_ came out _._

I opened my eyes and observed my vomit. It was white, with specks of red from my bleeding esophagus, and there it was, in the middle of it,

A bullet that had pierced through my chest and killed me.

I gritted my teeth and quickly pushed the bullet under the dresser for safekeeping, just as Mikoto and Fugaku burst through the door to deal with the commotion.

In the middle of the ruckus, Sasuke caught my eyes. His gaze was unreadable.

I brought my index finger to my lips, my red eyes glowed in warning.

Sasuke gave me an almost imperceptible nod.

We had a deal.

* * *

 **Thank you for reading this chapter. Thank you for favoriting and following my story. Your reviews, especially, really make my day.**

 **I sincerely want to improve my writing, so all critics are welcomed. If it is possible, please tell me which part you like best and which part you hate, and why.**

 **Check out my other story, "Iridescent".**


	3. Interlude: He Who Lives in Illusion

Disclaimer: Naruto belongs to Masashi Kishimoto. However the OCs do belong to me.

* * *

 _"If you ignored the benign ghost that haunted the place and the witch who lived inside, it was practically the picture of normalcy."_

 _ **Deborah Blake, Wickedly Ever After (Baba Yaga, #2.5)**_

* * *

The silence woke me up like a splash of breeze, it was there before it suddenly disappeared, replaced by faint ticking of the clock.

I roamed my eyes around the room, squinting them in order to see better. It seemed there was no one inside my nursery.

 _Finally._

I blinked my eyes. Once I opened them again they were vivid crimson in color, black tomoe were spinning lazily at the edge of each pupil.

I leaned my head against my pillow and tilted my head up, staring past the window into the gravel-grey clouds, watching with incredible clarity as beads of water fell into the rooftops. Although it was a quite mundane sight, I savored every twitch of movement I saw and burnt the image into my memory. I never thought that it would come to this, an existence so dull and meaningless that I craved for every ordinary thing I could get.

My life was the epitome of uncertainty. When I was not sleeping I would be plagued by my anxiety. I lived in constant fear, worrying whether my time was already near. It was hard not to, especially when one was a mere helpless babe. Yes I ate, I shat, I bathed, and I slept – I did whatever baby things that my progenitor expected me to do, but otherwise I felt nothing. I felt no excitement, no exhilaration that I would usually feel when I started my day, no nothing. I might as well be dead for all I care, I knew I would not notice the difference.

My undeveloped eyes also did not make my predicament felt any better. They were a hindrance more than they were useful. They could not tell the difference between two targets, they were not well coordinated, and they were not able to form a three-dimensional view of the world or see in depth. The images they produced were simply bizarre, and processing them just caused me a headache.

Thus, in times like this, when I was alone in the confinement of my crib, with no one else who would forcefully deactivated my sharingan – perhaps they feared that I would prematurely damage my eyes or that I would run out of chakra and had SIDS, who knew. I then would use them to observe anything this bare room could offer me – be it dust, stain, or tiny cracks in the ceiling; sometimes Sasuke too, whenever the boy visited, that way I could observe his language pattern and learn it. It was better than spending my time moping and generally doing nothing.

That was where things started to become problematic.

Although the sharingan abled me to see things with near-perfect clarity, my definition of reality became quite… twisted, suffice to say.

I began to notice how… _real_ my surrounding looked – even though it _was_ supposed to be unreal – and I... I began to question my own mind.

You see, the things around me, they did not have black lines that accentuated their color and separated them from each other. They have depth, a dimension, when they were supposed to be as flat as papers. However, no matter how real they looked and how detailed they appeared, I simply could not shake the feeling that there was this panel of glass that separated me from the outside world.

It was like I was watching everything through a TV screen. No matter how indubitably real the show seemed, I would instinctually know that it was simply an act, the fruit of someone else's imagination and creativity, and my surrounding was no different. It was simply a lie, a fabricated illusion that existed for the sole reason of messing with my mind.

I theorized that everything was only a dream. After all, dreams represented unconscious desires and wishes, they provided a psychological space where overwhelming, contradictory, or highly complex notions could be brought together by the dreaming ego that would be unsettling while awake. My existence in this world was incongruous enough that it _should_ be a dream, it made sense.

Except _it was not_.

Dreams had errors, glitches, something that differentiate them from reality, no matter how small and insignificant they were. Inside dreams I should have been able to manipulate my surroundings, even instantaneously combust this cursed room on fire if I wanted to. But no, I could not, no matter how much I wanted to.

I had observed this room extensively for any sign of incongruity and inconsistency with the little time I had in between my slumbers, and so far I had found nothing significant. The gravity was fine, things behaved normally, and they obeyed the classical physics laws. Everything behaved the way they supposed to, exactly like how I remembered in _my_ own world.

It made me confuse, thoroughly confuse. What I saw, under a normal circumstance, would be ruled as a reality, as I had no evidence to prove it otherwise. However, at the same time, my mind was also contradicting my previous thought by refusing to accept what I saw as a reality because _it knew_ that this world was only _flat drawings_ on Kishimoto's desk.

It was infuriating.

I was stuck in this metaphorical bubble of existence and I could not quite figure out what I was doing or how to get out of it.

I was stuck in a loop, where I continued to entertain myself in order to preserve my sanity in a place where I was practically blind, deaf, and mute, by having an internal debate with myself over the nature of my surrounding, over and over, chasing the answer but never reaching any resolute conclusion, like a madman.

* * *

I blinked my eyes to make sure that I was really seeing it.

Even with my awful eyesight I was sure, no, _I knew_ that I would not miss it.

It was there.

 _Why is it there?_

I rubbed my eyes with the back of my hand. It was still there.

I was seated on a highchair in the kitchen. Mikoto had started to give me solid foods in addition to breast milk. I was surprised that the mushy food was not as disgusting as I thought, it tasted quite good actually, and I could feel the taste of the sweet potatoes in it.

Mikoto brought the spoon into my mouth again, and her face came into my line of vision. There it was – black colored numbers on top of her head.

I wildly moved my arm and not-so-accidentally pushed the sippy cup in front of me into the floor. When Mikoto knelt on the floor and went to pick the plastic cup, I immediately activated my sharingan and used them to observe the crown of her head.

I stared in confusion as the numbers suddenly disappeared.

 _Is it an illusion?_

Just as Mikoto was about to get up, I immediately deactivated my eyes and wildly moved my arms again to pretend like I was happy about something. I considered my mission as a success when Mikoto seemed to be more amused rather than annoyed by my antics.

Now I could see the numbers again.

The numbers decreased constantly – _ticking_ , _ticking_ – like an exam clock, making sharp gnawing sounds inside my head. I had to admit that it started to bother me quite a bit. I did not even bother to think _where_ the numbers came from, and why _now_ , or why _I_ could see it, because that thing looked like a countdown.

 _Ticking, ticking, ticking._

I watched in morbid fascination as the numbers ticked by. Every time the numbers decreased, one second would also pass by.

I memorized the numbers and converted them into days, but the result did not match up with the time when I estimated the massacre would happen. Then I divided them with the sum of seconds within one year, still no match. After that I divided it by phi number just for the hell of it, but I still did not find the formula that would produce the closest date.

Reaching a dead-end, I made two temporary hypotheses to explain the numbers, at least until I saw other people – who hopefully also had numbers on top of their head. I theorized that the numbers I had by converting the original number into sum of days were Mikoto's natural lifespan, that she would have lived a quite long life if she had not been killed during the massacre. It was either _that_ , or my calculation was totally wrong and Mikoto was already fated to die in the massacre, which was just plain sad.

Either way, regardless of the numbers, I for the time being assumed that the numbers were a countdown, Mikoto's death countdown most likely, because what was the purpose of the numbers if not to signal something crucial?

I waited for a moment, waiting for something to resurface from within me, something that I supposed to feel, but it never came.

I did not understand.

Where was it, that heroic sense of duty to save this woman? She was a kind-hearted woman and an even more supportive and caring mother. She definitely did not deserve to be killed by the son she had carried and raised through thick and thin in cold blood. She even loved me, a nobody, and put up with me despite all of the worries and headaches I put her through. Shouldn't I feel _something_?

Well... I supposed I should, but _I don't_. If she died I might actually start crying, but no more than that. I feared more about my life actually.

 _When did I become so selfish?_

If things went normally, Mikoto would die in the massacre – and regardless of the countdown, it would not be long from now.

My heartbeat sped up and my neck started to sweat as I digested the information.

First thing first, I needed to make a plan to save myself. Once I was done, I might make another plan to help others. I should not overly concern myself with them. After all they were just drawings, a combination of imagination, paper and ink. They were not even a real person, so they did not really mean anything, right?

 _Right?_

...

…

…

I myself was not sure about it anymore.

* * *

 **Thank you for reading this chapter. Thank you for favoriting and following my story. Your reviews, especially, really make my day.**

 **I sincerely want to improve my writing, so all critics are welcomed. If it is possible, please tell me which part you like best and which part you hate, and why.**

 **Check out my other story, "Iridescent".**


	4. A Culpable Homicide

Disclaimer: Naruto belongs to Masashi Kishimoto. However the OCs do belong to me.

* * *

 _Culpable homicide is murder_ ** _  
_**

 _ **(b)** where a person, meaning to cause death to a human being or meaning to cause him bodily harm that he knows is likely to cause his death, and being reckless whether death ensues or not, by accident or mistake causes death to another human being, notwithstanding that he does not mean to cause death or bodily harm to that human being;_

 ** _Criminal Code, s 229_**

* * *

Fear could bring out the worst out of people. Fear could make them cruel, terrifyingly cruel, no matter how much they tried to justify their reasons or pretend otherwise. It was evident with what they were doing right now,

Ostracizing and hating an innocent child.

I was in a park, at the center of the village. It was green, and lush, and relaxing. Today was a perfectly ordinary day, everyone was still alive and I was not covered in my own bloods.

So far the day was good.

And yet, Fugaku for some reason had suggested (read: ordered) Sasuke to take me with him to the park. One might wonder why I seemed to be perplexed by this fact, as taking ones sibling to a park was an absolutely unexceptional situation.

But not for me.

I _never_ went out of the Uchiha district, or the house for that matter. The only occasion in which I ever went to the center of the village was when I go to the hospital for my check-up, and even then it was always a direct travel. Either Fugaku would dash with me through the rooftop, or flickered to the hospital, whichever suited his fancy. I was not allowed to go out of the house and I never tried to. If I used my sharingan, I could see a strange barrier that surrounded the house. I did not know if it was for my protection or to prevent me from leaving the premise, but I would not push my already nonexistent luck.

However, _now_ I was suddenly released from my confinement without even knowing whether this was truly a freedom or a simple test, a test which would determine whether I would be allowed to roam free or be locked in a solitary confinement. I did not know what Fugaku was thinking, I did not know what his motive was, and I could not read him. I felt alarmed and anxious about what the man was doing in the meantime despite Sasuke's constant nagging for me to play something or socialize with other children. Not for the lack of trying, I simply could not shake the thought that the worst case scenario was about to happen.

What if the massacre happened earlier than expected? What if by the time that I returned I was greeted by death bodies? Would I be the next one to die? Would I suffer? Would Obito pluck my eyes out of their sockets too?

It was when I was pondering (panicking) about these thoughts that I found myself wandering from the sandbox that Sasuke was playing at, to the quieter and uncrowded part of the park.

At first, I thought it was because of the haggard-looking man who was curling like a fetus at the base of one of the trees. He smelt heavily of alcohol, and he did not seem to be in his right mind, thus it would be understandable if parents chose to keep their children away from the potentially dangerous man. However, it was only once I ventured further into the park that I realized that the quietness was not due to the man, it was because people were avoiding _him_.

Uzumaki Naruto, the Nine-Tails' Jinchūriki in all of his glory, was sitting in a swing with his forehead being pressed against one of its supporting rope, hugging it for some semblance of comfort whilst staring dejectedly at the hordes of children that had refused to play with him. Their parents forbade them to, and the ones that did not simply follow their peers behavior.

I could understand those people's contempt. They felt fear and anger towards the horrific and mammoth entity that was being sealed inside the boy. They had lost so much when the Nine-Tails wreaked havoc several years ago, costing the lives of many villagers, be it parents, siblings, sons, daughters or grandfathers and grandmothers. They did not want to lose their children too in the event that Naruto lost his control over his tenant.

However, what I could not understand was how they could hate an innocent child just because said child had the Nine-Tails sealed inside him. He did not choose it, he did not even know that he was a human sacrifice for the good part of his life. The child did absolutely nothing to deserve such hate. He had no say whatsoever in being a human sacrifice, but he was still hated by his fellow citizens even though hating him gained them nothing but hurting a possibly, and by all evidence, an innocent child.

It was why I approached him. Naruto was only a child, but all he ever known was loneliness and the fact that people shunned him away for a reason he did not even know of. The least that I could do for him was giving him a company before others started to reach out to him. That was a humane thing to do.

I walked closer to him and waved my hand in greeting. "Hello."

"Hi…" Naruto hesitantly smiled and waved back. "Um… are you lost?" His eyes darted to his left and right, looking for parent(s) who probably lost their child. Perhaps he was disturbed by my sickly appearance, I thought, what with my pale skin, sunken eyes, and my lack of weight that did not match my long limbs.

Whatever.

"Not really. I'm just…" Good God, when did talking to another human being became so hard? I really needed to socialize more. I honestly could not remember talking to anyone that was not Sasuke or Mikoto – occasionally Itachi and Fugaku. "You know, walking."

Naruto averted his eyes to me again. "You're going somewhere?"

I shook my head. "Not really."

The blond boy pursed his lips, as if wanting to say something but was not sure how. I patiently waited for him to gather his courage.

Naruto fidgeted under my blank stare. "Then... do you–" he cleared his throat, "do you wanna play with me?"

I nodded. "Sure."

Naruto stared at me in disbelieve – as if he did not believe that what he had heard was real, that it could be that _simple_ – before his expression contorted into pure delight. "Yes!" He pumped his fist up.

I repressed a rueful smile, Naruto deserved something more than a pity.

"Wanna play the swing?" he asked excitedly.

My lips contorted into a grin, genuinely affected by the boy's positive energy. "Yeah."

He clapped his hands together. "Awesome!"

I climbed into the swing's seat with Naruto's help. It was quite an odd sensation not to feel the ground beneath my feet. Even after fourteen months I was still not used with the fact that I now had such short limbs.

"I'm going to push you, okay?"

I clenched my fists around the ropes and nodded my head in affirmative.

Naruto pushed the swing then. The force was relatively slow and gentle, to make sure that I did not fall from the wooden seat.

"Um, my name's Uzumaki Naruto, dattebayo! What's yours?"

I stiffened, considering the fact that Fugaku pretty much kept my existence as low profile as possible – for a reason that I still did not aware of – it was probably would be for the best if I did not tell anyone my name.

I was just about to sprout some made-up name when the blond boy started to chatter uncontrollably about every topic that had crossed his mind. He talked about how happy he was to have a friend, commenting that I looked funny in my glasses and that ramen was his favorite food. He started to babble about his day after that and I avidly listened to him, nodding and chuckling here and there at his ridiculous story.

But then my mind started to drifted off.

I could see why the boy liked to sit in this swing. It had a really nice view. The ground it was located was slightly higher than the rest of the park, it was a good place to observe the people who visited this place.

I could see everyone's countdowns from here. They were pitch black, akin to a black hole, they stood out like a sore thumb. I did not even know what their name were, the only thing that differentiate them from each other were their numbers.

I vividly remembered the day when I first watched a person's countdown stopped. I was in the hospital for my monthly check-up. There was a woman, she looked gravely ill. That day she was sitting in a wheelchair, under an apple tree, blankly staring into spaces. I was in my stroller, watching her from the other side of the hospital's garden. I did not know how long I watched her, but I remembered that I had almost dozed off when she just closed her eyes – her countdown was no longer ticking, it was stuck in what seemed to be this random number – she had died.

It should have been something more memorable, not necessarily magnificent, but I was expecting something… more.

Perhaps a metaphysical occurrence or something mystical, even a flash of light or some kind of fireworks will do. But there was _absolutely_ nothing, she simply died and that was it. So did with everyone else, no one was special. They were just another numbers, and one day they would eventually die too. Once they die, some cannon fodders would pop another cannon fodders to live their meaningless lives, then they too would die and the cycle would go on and on until their extinction.

So what was the point?

All of these people, they faced happiness and hardship throughout their finite life while I sat here, silently watching them as their life slowly burnt away into nothingness.

Thousands of years from now, nothing would remain of them. Thousands of days that they had lived, everything that they had accomplished and strived for, everything that they had learned and mastered, every joys and tears, every fears and insecurities would be nothing.

It was as if they never existed at all.

Billions of people, nameless, storyless, meaningless.

They struggled and worried and cried for nothing. They stressed and depressed and killed for nothing. Their lives had no meaning. Not a purpose, not a plan. Not a reason, not a cause.

And one day I would be one of them too. Again.

I was too caught up in my musing to remember that I was in a moving swing or notice the fact that the swing had gone faster. Unfortunately for me, I was not in a bucket shaped baby swing or a swing with a safety belt, thus one could guess just exactly what would happen when my already loose grip on the rope went lose, precisely at the same time when the kinetic energy of the swing was on full force.

I flew.

I knew I looked like a misplaced overgrown bird, but still, for that one split-second I was floating. I felt weightless, like a feather.

But then the sweet and friendly neighbor that went by the name gravity just _had_ to rear its ugly head and pull me down from my majestic state like a lump of dirt.

The result?

I awkwardly landed on the ground like a drunken hobo.

My knee was slightly bleeding and my palms were grazed from the impact. Oh, well... at least I did not suffer from other unsavory injuries.

Naruto was next to me in an instant, checking whether I was okay whilst apologizing profusely and helping me to stand up. Thankfully no one played in this part of the park, thus we did not attract any unwanted attention.

Well… except for the earlier haggard looking man who was staggering towards us with his hatred and contempt laid bare in his face for the world to see.

Uh oh…

My social life might only exist inside the Uchiha household, however even _I_ knew that there was an unwritten law that Konoha's jinchūriki shall not be harmed. However, the sight of my fall from the swing might be misinterpreted as an aggression against an innocent civilian and might be used as a justification against attacking the resident Tailed-Beast' vessel.

I better made Naruto go before he received a tongue-lashing – or worse, a physical attack – from the man.

"–so sorry. I don't mean it. Don't be mad 'kay? I–"

I tugged the blond boy's shirt and intoned, "Go."

"What? Go where? Do you want to go home? I can walk you–"

"Bad man is coming," I warned.

"What?!"

"Run!"

"But–"

" _Go home_!" I hissed.

I watched as his eyes turned blank for a moment before he turned his back on me and ran to the opposite direction.

I deactivated my sharingan and rubbed my forehead to alleviate my budding headache. What I did not know at the time was that my headache was only the start of everything that went wrong that day.

I only felt a light sensation against my shoulder before I was being shoved to the ground.

 _What the–_

"You stupid boy, why did you play with that monster?!"

I groaned, feeling a bit disorientated after the impact, but I still glared at the rude man that towered over me. "He's not a monster."

The man's eyes went wild at my words.

I stilled when the man grabbed me by my hair and glared at me like I was the lowest scum on Earth.

"What'd you know, huh?! What'd you know?!" he growled. " _It_ kills _my wife_! It kills _my son_!" His hands shook and his eyes become unfocused. "My little boy..." he whispered.

I understood that the man was grieving, but what the hell did that had anything to do with attacking _me_? The Uchiha would be pissed if they knew that one of their members was attacked by a Konoha citizen. I did not need anyone to fuel more fire between the clan and the village, _thank you very much_.

"Don't touch me, please," I asked nicely.

He did not listen, his big palms shifted into my cheeks instead, grounding my head to the ground.

"How many times have I told you not to play outside, huh?! Why'd you never listen! What should I do to make you listen?!"

 _Excuse me?_

"If you hadn't gone outside, your mother wouldn't have followed you. She's missing, I don't know where. I've searched everywhere, but I never find her. I even waited under her favorite tree for _days_ , so why doesn't she come?! Where is she?!" he rambled.

"I don't know," I answered calmly whilst assessing my situation to look for a way to escape from the delusional man.

I was very ill-equipped to deal with a patient right now, especially the one that looked like he was having a potentially-violent psychotic episode. Suffice to say I was understandably worried when I did not find _any_.

I watched as the man's expression quickly turned from angry into horrified in a second as he whispered rapidly, obviously frightened. "There's a terrible monster coming! You have to run! But don't return home, our house is destroyed! Run to the mountain, run from the monster, you'll be safe there. I will wait for your mother." His pupils dilated and he grinned. "I knew she's coming, she must be on her way here, she's–"

"She's dead," I stated calmly.

There was no point in feeding his hallucination. I had been gone for quite some time and Sasuke was bound to realize my disappearance at any second. I did not want to cause trouble for anyone, it was better if I quickly got out of this situation.

"No she's–"

"She _is_ dead."

"No," he vehemently denied. "I've been waiting for her all of this time. Why would I wait for her if she's dead?!" he spat out.

"Because you're grieving," I answered, still maintaining my calm tone.

"Liar!" he screamed. "Liar, liar, liar! Why are you _lying_?!" His uncut nails painfully dug into my cheekbones, making crescent shaped marks on the pale skin.

I repressed a wince from the pain in my cheeks and gritted out. "It's the truth."

"No, no, no, no, no, no... I waited for days, _days_!" He shook his head. "I waited for both of you in the mountain, why _didn't_ you come?!"

Goddamnit, we returned to square one.

I attentively grasped his wrists and pressed my fingers against them.

" _Look_ at me," I asked gently, but firmly.

He did not.

" _Look_ at _me_ ," I repeated in a stronger tone, he finally did. "I am _not_ your son. Your son _is_ dead and so _is_ your wife. I'm sorry but that's the _reality_."

The man stared at me with an expression of disbelieve. His hands clenched and unclenched sporadically, as if he was having a seizure.

When the man continued to be quiet, I thought my words finally went through him. I was ready to bolt out at any moment if the man did not just suddenly wring his hands around my neck.

My sharingan activated instinctually at the danger, their color only proceed to delve the man even further into his delusion.

"Who do you think you are _demon_?!" he spat out. "I have no home because of _you_! I buried empty caskets because of _you_! I'm _nothing_ because of _you_!" He took a shuddering breath. "Why do _you_ get to live while my family _not_?!" He giggled deliriously. "You must be laughing at us now! Stupid! Weak! Human!"

I futilely trashed around and clawed his hands with my blunt nails. Black spots were already dancing around my vision. I knew I would not last long if I did not free myself from his grip.

I lifted my pelvis and kicked him in the face. It did not do much damage.

The man gritted his teeth and slammed me against the ground before he punched my face.

 _Son of a bit–_

He tightened his grip.

 _God, I can't breathe._

It was in this moment that I hoped that I had not awakened my sharingan, because what was the point of having a precognition and seeing everything in slow-motion if I could _not_ even run and _save my goddamn life_?!

"Do you know how _many_ people you have killed?! Do _you_ know?! Of course you _don't_! You don't _care_! You just kill," squeezed, "and kill," squeezed, "and kill until there's nothing left!"

Depleted of oxygen, I weakly pushed him away.

"Why can't you just _die,_ you bastard?! Die!"

My vision was starting to waver, I was starting to lose consciousness.

Intense feelings coursed through me. Anger, hopelessness, and fear filled every fiber of my being. However, the most prominent of them all was hatred, a burning and intoxicating hatred.

I was only trying to be a decent human being. What did I get in return?

I croaked out a bitter laugh. Sometimes I wondered why I even bother.

The cannon fodder shook me. "What the hell are you laughing at?!"

 _Honestly?_

"Your…" I wheezed, "worthless ass…"

I grunted when he punched me again.

My eyes felt burning.

If I was free right now, I could just imagine hanging the man with a rope. Strangling him and making him suffer from the lack of air before breaking his neck.

All I ever wanted was to live. Was that really wrong of me?

I felt like I was being dragged into the abyss again. I felt sleepy and nauseous, but at the same time my head felt like it was about to explode.

I glared at the space above vermin's head, at his steadily ticking countdown, injecting as much venom as I could into the infuriating sight – _why does he get to live while I'm not?!_ – and whispered for one last time.

"I hope..."

 _I hope with every fiber of my being, that_

"You…"

 _You miserable piece of shit,_

"Die…" I choked out.

Then everything was black.

* * *

 **Thank you for reading this chapter. Thank you for favoriting and following my story. Your reviews, especially, really make my day.**

 **I sincerely want to improve my writing, so all critics are welcomed. If it is possible, please tell me which part you like best and which part you hate, and why.**

 **Check out my other story, "Iridescent".**


	5. A Dangerous Mind

Disclaimer: Naruto belongs to Masashi Kishimoto. However the OCs do belong to me.

* * *

 _"I'm searching for answers_  
 _'cause something is not right._  
 _I follow the signs,_  
 _I'm close to the fire._

 _I fear that soon you'll reveal_  
 _Your dangerous mind."_

 _ **Within Temptation, A Dangerous Mind**_

* * *

I woke up to a scratching sound,

 _Scratch, scratch, scritchy-scratch,_

And to an aching throat and a headache. The oddly familiar sounds were quickly pushed into the back of my mind as I regained my awareness, only quietly humming an eerie melody at the edge of my consciousness.

The pain crawled from the sides of my neck. It was accompanied by phantom pressure that ghosted over my windpipe. Wheezing sounds escaped me as air filtered through my mouth. It was not until few seconds later that I realized that the hand that constricted my airway was no longer there, that I could breathe.

I opened my eyes, slowly and gently, to the bleary sight of murky blue and gloomy white. My eyes briefly flickered to the side. My hazy mind did not register the odd position of the sun, only the uncomfortable feeling of my glasses' bridge digging into my nasal bone.

I exhaled a breath and swallowed my saliva – _no breathing difficulty, no dysphagia or odynophagia,_ I mentally listed. I pressed my fingers against my neck, trailing them from below my chin to my suprasternal notch. My thyroid cartilage and hyoid bone seemed to be fine, they were not fractured. I felt my pulse, checking for any irregular heartbeat or palpitation. I could not feel any contusion or fingernails impression on my skin, but I could feel what seemed to be an abrasion near on my jugular, I was not sure.

I shifted my legs and moved to stand. It was then that I noticed the dull ache from my leg.

I glanced down at my knee, expecting a still bleeding wound. What I met instead was the opposite. The blood from the wound was already dried and currently sticking on my skin, forming a thin layer of red on and around the wound. The same thing could be said about the grazes in my palms. _Just exactly how long was I out?_

I glanced to the direction of the rest of the park's visitors. There were too many people. It would be hard to sneak around them inconspicuously. I then glanced to the row of dense forest ahead of me; with canopy of trees so thick they almost blocked the sunrays.

My choice was obvious.

I walked straight forward. To where, I did not know, I did not care either. Sometimes I would turn left, then right again, sometimes I would see the same trees again. It was when I thought about returning to the park that I stumbled upon a small crater – most likely an impact crater, what with its raised rims and its floor that was lower in elevation than the surrounding terrain – and at the center of it stood a massive tree. Its roots digging into the earth, its height towered over every other trees that I had passed.

This particular tree felt different from others. I could feel the steady flow of energy emanating from it, not unlike the current that I felt flowing beneath my skin ever since my arrival in this universe. However, there was something about the tree that simply felt peculiar – and familiar – the way its thick trunk spiraled, forming helix upon helix from end to end rather than running in straight furrows, and how it was the _only_ plant that was able to live inside the crater. It was almost as if it was sucking the very lives of everything around it.

 _What–_

"Hey!"

"Fuc–" I whipped my head into the direction of the voice.

 _Oh_.

"Sasuke," I muttered, unimpressed. The boy almost gave me a heart attack.

I turned my head back only to find that the massive tree was no longer there.

"The hell…"

The space that it once occupied was replaced by an indistinct row of dense trees. There was no shred of evidence that suggested that the tree was even there.

I was about checked it with my sharingan when I heard my designated babysitter halted behind me. His cheeks were flushed red from exertion, few strands of his hair stuck into his face. On his back was a small bag that carried my food.

"Where have you been?! I've searched for you everywhere! I thought you've been kidnapped!"

"Err… park?" I offered.

I was a bit startled when Sasuke suddenly leaned forward and held my head in his palms, his gaze scrutinizing me.

 _I'm so busted..._

"Oh my God…" Sasuke trailed off.

I braced for his next words and the panic that would surely ensue.

"You're bleeding!"

I was confused. "No, I'm–"

"Let's go to the hospital! You could be dying!"

Sasuke immediately linked his bigger hand with mine and drag me forward.

"Nii-san!" My call fell on deaf ear.

"Nii-san, I'm okay!"

The boy kept on ignoring me.

"Sasuke, stop!" I roughly yanked my hand back, inducing a protest from my shoulder, and firmly stopped Sasuke before the six years old could begin to drag me again and cause a ruckus. He might not notice the bruises – _are they gone already?_ – but the same thing could not be said about the medic at the hospital.

Sasuke scowled. "Why?"

"Father will…" I was about to launch a full tirade on why we should not go to the hospital and the ramifications that this event could cause to the already strained relationship between the clan and the village – with the coup d'état plan already in motion, it would be on everyone's, _on my_ , best interest to keep the situation calm and controlled. As meaningless as I was, I was still an Uchiha. The Uchiha was already so angry with Konoha, they could very easily use the incident as a pretense to take action against the village – when I remembered that I was supposed to be a toddler whose linguistic and reasoning skill was supposed to be abysmal.

"Will what?" Sasuke asked impatiently. "Father always takes you to the hospital when you're sick, so what's the problem? I know that he can be really scary sometimes, but you shouldn't worry, he's not going to be mad."

 _Yeah, right._

I gestured to my wounded knee and calmly held out my hand. "Bag." I would deal with Fugaku later, now I needed to patch myself up first. I did not know exactly how long the time had passed, but do I know that I did not want to suffer from infection.

Sasuke frowned in displeasure, but he let the bag down.

I rummaged through it, searching for a first aid kit. One of the pros of living with ninja family was that they were always prepared to deal with this kind of thing.

Sasuke breathed an exasperated sigh, an annoyed gesture that he seemed to only reserve for me, and beckoned his hand. "Here, let me do it."

I obediently plopped down on the ground whilst Sasuke fished out the necessary equipment from the bag.

Once the boy grabbed a bottle of water, I held my palms out and let the cool water ran through them, washing away the debris. After that, Sasuke poured the water on my left knee. I used my fingertip to scrub the red crusts from the edges of the wound whilst the water washed the bloods away, thankfully there was no debris in the wound itself.

Sasuke grabbed a small cloth from the bag's front pocket and dabbed it on my palms. "How can you get hurt so much?" he lamented. "I only take my eyes off of you for a second and you're no longer there."

I shrugged. "I fell."

Sasuke lifted an eyebrow, unconvinced. "I don't know where you 'fell' but I'm sure it won't make your eyes bleed."

 _Wait, what?!_

I suppressed myself from outwardly reacting even though my heart suddenly jolted at the information. "How red?" I inquired clinically. _Is it subconjunctival hemorrhage?_

Sasuke moved the cloth to my knee. "The whites of your eyes are completely red." The boy's stern gaze bored into mine. "You really should get them checked."

I pursed my lips.

I did not feel any pain or have any change of vision in my eyes, but it was worrying that it happened to both eyes at the same time. Although, thinking back about it, if I correctly estimated the force that the man exuded and took the duration of the strangulation into consideration, there should not be enough pressure to burst the blood vessels in both eyes. On the other hand, if I remembered correctly, I already lost consciousness within ten seconds flat. It was as if the man really knew the amount of forces that was necessary and which places that was needed to press to make his victim unconscious.

Was he a ninja, perhaps a civilian with prior self-defense lessons? But if he was, shouldn't I be dead by now? If by any chance he suddenly regained his senses and released me – which was unlikely – I should have regained my consciousness within ten seconds too, but all evidence suggested that I did not. If my airway continued to be blocked, even only for few minutes after that, it would induce a cardiac arrest, which meant I should have been dead by now.

I gnawed at my bottom lip, _what am I missing…?_

"Nii-san?" Sasuke hummed in response, he did not take his eyes from his current task of applying an antibacterial ointment over my knee. "Red?" I pointed to my left cheek, where I have been struck.

Sasuke looked up. "No. Why?"

So there were no bruises or petechiae on my face. It appeared there was nothing out of ordinary except for my eyes.

"Nothing," I replied nonchalantly.

This was worrying. I remembered that when I checked the condition of my neck earlier, although surprised, I was glad that the damage was not extensive. However, considering everything that I had gathered so far, the lack of bruises or noticeable wounds were starting to look like a deliberate cover-up for the incident. Who would believe me if I said that I had been attacked when all evidences of said attack had disappeared?

I frowned at the thought.

My condition by far was _too fine_ for someone who had been strangled into unconsciousness by a grown man. It heavily contradicted the evidence that I had gathered so far, which pointed towards the fact that my assailant was possibly a trained killer who was not sound in mind, thus made it unlikely for me to survive with a minimal amount of damage.

I only had one explanation for this, and it was that there was someone that helped me. But _who_ was it? Did he or she found any internal injuries? I did not want to be led into a false sense of security by the lack of external injuries only to end up dead few days later due to unnoticed delayed consequences. There was only so much that I would do to prevent the massacre. Giving up my life was not one of them.

I heaved a sigh and glanced back to Sasuke. It seemed the boy was done with my knee, the Band-Aid had been put and everything else had been returned to the bag.

"Thank you." I really meant it.

"Anytime," he assured. Sasuke then wrapped his hand around mine and pulled me up. "Come on, let's go home. If you don't want to go to the hospital, at least let your eyes rest. Maybe they will heal tomorrow."

It was unlikely that the blood would be gone by tomorrow, but Sasuke had a fair proposition. It ticked me however that I had to return to the compound again when I had not even spent a quality time during my time outside. Being a child _suck_.

Oh wait, other children were not imprisoned in their own house.

Speaking of which, "Is 'Tachi-nii home?"

Today was already Saturday. Last Monday, Sasuke had joined the academy, and at the very same day Itachi had gone on a mission with Shisui. I did not know what their mission was, however if I was going with Itachi Shinden's timeline, they should be on mission that was given by Danzō, a mission to assassinate a traitor as Itachi's mean to prove himself before he would be admitted to ANBU.

"I don't know." Sasuke shrugged. "He said he would be home this afternoon, but he isn't. Maybe he has arrived now."

 _It's definitely a possibility,_ I thought.

Hopefully he was already home, there was something that I had been planning to do since Fugaku announced that Itachi's application into the ANBU had been accepted and will soon become official. After all, it was the start of the chain of events that would lead to the clan's massacre.

It was when Sasuke and I were about to head home that I began to hear the strange sounds again, the sounds which I had wholly ignored until now.

 _Scratch, scratch, scritchy-scratch._

Only this time, it was accompanied by something that made the hair at the back of my neck stood.

 _Is that…_

"Nii-san, do you hear that?" I whispered.

Sasuke looked at me with an obvious bafflement. "Hear what?"

" _Those_ sounds!"

His expression turned blank.

"What sounds?"

I mirrored Sasuke's expression. I did not believe that _it_ was simply my imagination.

From time to time, I would experience strange things. They were random, mostly innocuous, but they made me restless. I could not shake the feeling that someone was watching, waiting in the shadow. I attributed those occurrences to my anxiety, which I was not ashamed to admit had been unhealthily high-strung ever since I woke up in this place. The other strange thing was the scratching sound. It was always there, a background hum that followed me every day. It was never intrusive, thus I learn to ignore it.

 _But this…_

Sasuke's lips were set into a displeased frown as he wrapped his fingers around mine. "Let's just go."

"But–"

"There's nothing. Stop making things up."

"I'm not lying!"

Sasuke turned around sharply.

"We've been through this already, why can't you just stop?!" he shouted. "You think you hear or see something, but guess what?! There's nothing!"

"You're too loud!" I hissed. My eyes darted around the trees and the bushes for any sign of… whatever it was. "This one, it's _different_." I insisted. "And I'm not lying." I clenched my jaw. "I _never_ lie." At least not about this kind of thing.

Sasuke barked out a hollow laugh. "No, you're not. You're just crazy. That's why father locks you up in the house after all."

* * *

If anyone were to ask Sasuke about what he thought of his little brother, he would answer that he did not know, that he was not sure.

Itachi said that older siblings were supposed to protect their younger, that they had to love them, care for them, and shield them away from pain. However, every time Sasuke looked at his little brother, the first thing that came into his mind was how odd he was, how unnatural. There was just something that was really wrong about him, but Sasuke could not explain what.

Sasuke remembered the first time he saw his baby brother. The baby came earlier than expected. He was kept inside a transparent box, his skin was red and his eyes were tightly shut, he looked tiny and helpless.

Sasuke wanted to ask various questions to his mother – he wanted to know why the baby was connected to tubes and wires. Was the baby sick? Why was he so tiny? Could he hold him? – but he restrained himself, because his mother was not smiling and his usually stern father looked worried, so there must be something wrong with the baby. He kept the information to himself though.

It took almost three weeks for his baby brother to come home, but when he finally did, Sasuke immediately went to play with him. However, the baby was asleep and his mother did not allow him to wake the baby, so he dejectedly returned to his own room.

Few hours passed and Sasuke was not sure what had happened, but one second he was watching the TV and the next thing he knew the baby was screaming for his life.

Sasuke immediately dashed into the baby's nursery to calm him down. When he arrived there the baby was violently kicking his blankets, trying to get out of them. He picked the baby up, leaving his blankets on the crib. He supported his neck like his big brother taught him to, and started to rock him gently. However, the baby kept on squirming in his arms, and he was afraid that he was going to drop him. So he sat on the ground, put a pillow in his lap, and laid the baby on top of it. When the baby started hitting himself, Sasuke reacted immediately and pried the baby's hands away. But then the baby got angry and used his sharingan, and much to his horror, paralyzing him and made him unable to move or breathe. It was only once the baby broke the eye contact with him that he could finally move his muscles, and by then the baby were already vomiting blood and his stomach content into the floor. His parents came into the nursery after that. They told him to stay in his room before they went to the hospital. Sasuke complied. He did not want to play with his mean baby brother anymore.

Sasuke did not know it at the time, but that incident marked the beginning of everything that went wrong with his family.

Once they returned from the hospital, his mother and father started arguing, their normally composed selves cracked. When his parents started screaming at each other, Itachi took him and their baby brother to their cousin's house. They stayed there for few hours, until the baby woke up from his slumber with a hungry stomach. His big brother then returned to their house, he did not know what his big brother did or said to their parents, but once they all returned home his parents acted like nothing had happened. Thus Sasuke followed suit, he pretended like it was a perfectly normal day, just him with his family.

Things progressed surprisingly normal after that, although his baby brother was different from other babies, _he was quiet and he never cried; when he was not sleeping he would only lie on his crib, unmoving; only staring with those creepy eyes of his_. Sometimes he would hear his parents arguing in their room, but they kept their voices down and they never argued in front of their children, so Sasuke thought that their family was still fine, that they would be fine.

They would not.

Few months passed and his baby brother's behavior started to get weirder. He withdrew from everyone, he did not want to play and he had trouble with eating and sleeping. He only curled into himself in his crib and stared blankly at nothing. He felt dead, he looked dead – maybe he was dead.

Sometimes Sasuke wondered if the baby hated them, because it felt as if the baby was hoping that by ignoring them all they would disappear from his life. His big brother said that it was absurd, babies could not think like that. Sasuke followed his words, because his big brother knew best.

 _He does not._

His parents were greatly affected by his baby brother condition. Sasuke remembered how his mother would always stare at the baby in worry – the dark circles under her eyes were prominent. People said that she was going mad. His father on the other hand spent most of his day in his office, sometimes he did not even come home. His big brother wanted to temporarily leave from the shinobi force to help their mother care for their baby brother, but father forbade him – he said that he was the clan heir and he had his responsibilities, he should not concern himself with his youngest brother – thus in addition of arguing with mother, his father also started to argue with his big brother. Sometimes the arguments got so bad that his big brother did not return home for days.

Things continued like that for the next two months. His baby brother looked sicker and sicker for each passing day and no one had any idea how to cure him – they did not even know what was wrong with him – his parents argued and blamed each other, and his big brother was also dragged into the quarrel every time he tried to defuse the tension.

Everything was a mess, and one day Sasuke just had had enough. He hated seeing his mother drinking those foul-smelled liquids, he hated that his father was rarely home, he hated that every time the two of them meet they would always argue, he hated that his big brother was being sent to do missions in Kami only knew where instead of helping him to deal with his baby brother. He wished that his baby brother did not exist, because if he did not then all of these horrible things would never happen. If he did not exist, his family would not be like this. He wanted him gone, to disappear, so he could return to his perfect life, just him with his big brother, mother, and father.

Thus Sasuke acted on impulse, on the sudden burst of epiphany that coursed through his being, like he was given a mission the gods themselves.

It was a perfect day. Itachi was training for his chūnin exam, father was working, and mother was going to the grocery, thus he was alone with the baby. He crept into his baby brother's nursery. The baby was lying in his crib with a little smile on his face. He looked very peaceful and unburdened, so unlike the other times when he woke up. The sight itself only spurred Sasuke even further. He knew that he was doing the right thing, his baby brother would be better off sleeping. Sasuke pressed a long kiss on the baby's cold forehead, told him that he loved him, before he placed the pillow on top of the baby's head, smothering him, ridding him of his suffering. Now the baby could sleep forever, he would be cured and everyone would be happy.

It was less than thirty minutes later that Sasuke heard his mother's scream tore through the house. When he finally managed to force himself to return his composure, he walked into his baby brother's nursery. In there, he found his mother kneeling on the ground, her slim frame trembling. Her tears were running down her face whilst she clung to the baby in her arms. Her eyes were blown wide, her sharingan were spinning erratically in mad frenzy.

Sasuke on the other hand only felt indignation. _Why_ was she crying? His mother should have been happy. She did not have to worry about the baby anymore. It was not like she actually cared about the baby – it was not like _anyone_ barring him actually cared about his sick baby brother. They did _not_ have the right to feel sorry when they all but abandoned him alone. They did not have any right.

His mother ordered him to go to his room and not to tell his father and brother about what had happened, not that they even came home to interrogate him anyway. Sasuke did as he was told and locked himself inside his room.

He could not sleep though, because every time he closed his eyes all he could see was his baby brother's dead eyes staring at him.

And because something just kept on scratching on his door, trying to get into his room.

When he woke up the next morning – feeling sluggish, irritated, and terrified – he was greeted with the sight of his smiling mother, holding a very much _alive_ baby in her mother's arms. It was the first time that he had seen her smile in months, thus Sasuke ignored how his mother's smile was stretched too wide, ignored how there was something that just seemed off with her, ignored how his instinct told him to run away from her. Though confused – thinking back about it, Sasuke still could not comprehend what his mother had done. Dead person did _not_ just suddenly come back to life, dead person should have stayed dead – he also felt happiness for his baby brother. He was finally cured.

His mother handed his baby brother to him, saying that she was going to take a shower. She indeed smelt horrible. There were dried red crusts in her fingernails and neck. Sasuke only rocked his sleeping – _but breathing_ – baby brother back and forward, his mother's odd appearance quickly pushed aside in favor of playing with his baby brother.

It never occurred to Sasuke that his mother was so drenched in bloods that the smell of deaths practically clung to her because of the atrocities that she had committed in exchange for her baby's life.

Slowly, but surely, everything returned to normal after what Sasuke dubbed as the second incident. With his baby brother no longer being the source of worries in everyone's head – _he's still as quite as before, but now he actually felt alive, he has a presence, he's no longer just a dead husk that their parents stored at the corner of the house_ – his parents were still giving each other cold shoulder, but they were no longer hostile. His big brother on the other hand had become more distant, only watching them from afar. Sasuke was not even sure what gone through his head anymore. Maybe he was the one that had gone insane.

Time passed again. Sasuke watched as his baby brother grew, watched him as he forced himself to crawl and then walk at an abnormally young age. Watched him as he listened attentively to what others were saying, trying to understand the world around him. The boy had come far from being a half-dead mannequin into an actual living being. He still had not ceased his staring habit though, not even when father gave him glasses to help his eyesight. Mother said that it was normal. She said that the boy was learning their faces, recognizing them. That might be true if the boy was indeed looking at their face. However, when one spent as much time with the boy as Sasuke do, one would eventually realize that the boy was not staring at people's faces, rather, at the spaces on top of their heads.

When the boy turned one, he started to question Sasuke about strange noises and phenomenon. At first, Sasuke had thought that the boy was only imagining things, but he quickly realized that oddities had _indeed_ started to happen at random interval. They were always subtle, almost unnoticeable if one did not know where to look. The occurrences always varied, sometimes strange sounds would resonate, sometimes the air would get colder, wind would blow out of nowhere, sometimes the lights would flicker and shadows would dance and twisted at the door and the windowsill. Sometimes animal would behave weirdly, they would huddle in the corner, hiding. Even the fishes on the koi pond would not appear to the surface. Sasuke might not really understand just what exactly made his little brother different, but he was certain that the boy was the one who was causing those _things_.

Sasuke, of course, always denied it whenever the boy asked whether he had seen or heard anything peculiar, even if he was only able to notice the insignificant things. He was unwilling to admit that the boy's oddities had started to affect him as well.

Sasuke was the only sane person left in his house, and he would like to remain that way.

So far, things had been going fine. Sasuke had been successfully juggling between school, training, and looking after his baby brother without any significant difficulty. When father asked him to take his little brother to the park, Sasuke was sure that it would be an easy task.

He was _wrong_.

The boy just had to wander around – _Sasuke choose to ignore the part where he urges his little brother to befriend someone_ – make Sasuke searched him for over two hours, and then get himself hurt whilst under _his_ watch. Sasuke could easily sprout a made up story about his knee wound, but the same thing could not be said about the boy's eyes. Father would probably kill him if the boy was unable to use his sharingan again, and mother would kill him if he abandoned the boy here… wherever this place was. Sasuke himself was not sure, he only followed his baby brother's trail. However, just as he was about to return home and had his big brother deal with the boy – hopefully he was already home – _that sound_ just had to appear. Sasuke still remembered it as clearly as one year ago.

 _Locked in his own room, alone in the darkness, unable to run or escape, with undependable father and brother that never come no matter how long he cried, all he could hear was_ it _scratching his bedroom door, whispering for him to come out, saying that they should play, with his life as its stake._

Sasuke was not embarrassed to admit that he was ready to bolt out of here – _because bad things always follows it_ – but his baby brother just had to be a brat and refused to go home. And before he knew it, their conversation spiraled into _this_ , where the boy freaked out about the _thing_ and Sasuke denied everything.

On any other day Sasuke would indulge him, but not today. He was scared on top of being tired and irritated. He was only six, he should not have been the one who had to deal with this.

"No, you're just insane. That's why father locks you up in the house after all."

 _Actually, it was because a Hyūga girl had been successfully kidnapped by foreign ninja. His little brother could not defend himself, so it was better for him to stay in the house, where he would be safe,_ but the boy did not need to know that _._

Sasuke knew he was being needlessly cruel, but it was not like the boy actually understood everything he said. And Sasuke had _so much_ pent-up anger and frustration towards everything that he did not even care just what came out of his mouth anymore.

"You have _no_ idea just what kind of trouble you cause for me, there's never a day without something weird happens to you. Why can't you just be normal?! Other children are free to do what they want while _I_ am _stuck_ here watching over _you_." Sasuke pressed his palm against his forehead and muttered, "Sometimes I wish you just stay dead…"

Registering what he had just said, Sasuke immediately searched his brother's face for any kind of reaction, but there was nothing. The boy was only staring eerily blank at him.

Sasuke sighed and rubbed the bridge of his nose.

Just what did he expect anyway?

"Let's just go," he muttered.

His baby brother was curiously obedient.

* * *

"Sometimes I wish you just stay dead."

 _Me too, Sasuke. Me too._

But I knew for a fact that he was not talking about the death that I experienced before I was born into this godforsaken world and family. So which death was he talking about? Because I honestly did not remember any other one.

And I wholeheartedly agreed with his insults, the boy had every right to do that since he was the one who was burdened the most by my existence.

But what could I do? I did not ask to be put here. I never wanted to constantly look over my shoulder, waiting for something bad to happen. I never wanted to have these urges to constantly run at every little thing. I did not want to have nightmares. I did not want to keep on looking at the doors and the windows, always wondering if they were securely locked even though deep down I knew that they could not stop whoever it was that would come through them if they wished so.

I wanted…

 _What? What do you want? To live? What're there to live when the only thing you feel are powerlessness, uncertainty, and fear? What's there to live when there's only pain? Is that what you call living?_

I didn't know what I want.

"Let's just go," Sasuke muttered, his tone conveying just how tired he was with this. Whatever this was.

 _You and me, buddy._

I linked our hands, focusing on Sasuke's warm grip and ignored everything else.

I ignored the cold wind that slither down my spine and coiled around my neck like a poisonous snake. I ignored the ghostly cold breath besides my ears, caressing, hugging, _whispering_.

I ignored the tingle on the tips of my fingers, as if they were touching something that was not there. Ignored how I could feel warm liquid seeping under my fingernails. I ignored how I could feel twitching – soft, pliable, _tasty_ – _meat_ beneath my fingerprints.

I ignored how the scratching sounds only grew louder the more I ignored them. I ignored how they were followed by the sounds of skin being peeled, slowly, bit by bit, like how one would peel scabs from dried wounds. I ignored the whimpers that came every time the nails accidentally scratched the naked flesh.

I ignored the staccato of agonized screams that bellowed in sync with the wrenching sounds of bones – _cold and hard, the nails could not pierce them_ – easily ripped from their joints, one by one, puncturing fleshes and rupturing vessels.

I ignored the sounds of rope being tightened, digging into skin, ripping it, layer by layer; followed by gasps and choked plea of _please, please, please, have mercy…_

And...

Silence.

There was no scratching or choking sounds anymore, just an eerie and uncomfortable silence.

I took a shuddering breath and loosen my grip on Sasuke's hand. _It's over, it's over, it's o–_

I felt something else settled within my fist instead, _a rope_ , with heavy weight hanging beneath it.

Then it suddenly slipped, sliding over my palm.

 _No, no, no, no, no._

I instinctually tightened my grip on the invincible cord, _it's too heavy…_ The rope slid again, its rough edges scrapped against my skin, tearing the outermost layer.

I held on tighter. Bloods began to ooze from my skin, slipping between my fingers, slicking my grip.

It slipped, _down, down, down, down, until–_

Snap _._

The singular sound echoed like a clang of sword against metal inside my mind, a finality that I could never change. It was over...

No…

 _Your fault_ , it whispered.

No…

 _Your fault_.

 _Oh God…_ I sucked in a breath. _Oh God…_

 _Your fault_.

I pressed my fist against my mouth to muffle my panicked scream.

 _Your fault_.

I stared down at my shaking hand and saw bloods decorating it, dripping from the abrasions that were scattered on my palm. This was not just ink and stains. _It's real_ , it whispered. This was life, and I was holding it in my hand.

I drew my eyes back up and meet Sasuke's horrified face. Behind him, beneath the rustling leaves and hanging on the strange tree, I saw nothing else but the dead man.

"Still think I'm lying?"

…

Somebody out there had taken his life, _his life_ , and here I was with his warm, sticky bloods,

Feeling the most alive I'd felt in years.

* * *

 **Thank you for reading this chapter. Thank you for favoriting and following my story. Your reviews, especially, really make my day.**

 **I sincerely want to improve my writing, so all critics are welcomed. If it is possible, please tell me which part you like best and which part you hate, and why.**

 **Check out my other story, "Iridescent".**


	6. The Divine Tree

Disclaimer: Naruto belongs to Masashi Kishimoto. However, the OCs do belong to me.

* * *

 _"The land produced vegetation: plants bearing seed according to their kinds and trees bearing fruit with seed in it according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good."_

 _ **New International Version, Gen. 1. 12**_

* * *

I swallowed my spit – it tasted like a horrid bile of acid. I squared my shoulders and harden my eyes. I held my head high and took a calming deep breath, ignoring the churning in my stomach. I clenched my fists and brought them to my sides, my tremor barely visible. I then averted my eyes to Sasuke's still-frozen form.

"Brother–"

"Stop right there!" Sasuke snapped. "I know that look," he continued warily. "Forget whatever you're thinking of doing because you're _not_ doing it." He grabbed me by my shoulder. "We're going home."

"You haven't even looked at it," I rebutted.

Sasuke tightened his grip, his lips pursed together. "What is it now?"

"A dead person," I stated bluntly. "And before you say it, I am not lying," I added when Sasuke was about to open his mouth and response.

Sasuke pressed his lips together as he scrutinized me for any sign of deceit. When he did not find any, his expression rapidly contort into something in between bewilderment, disbelief and terror. The boy quickly schooled his expression when he met my concerned gaze.

"Okay. Let's just–let's just ignore it. Just close your eyes and I will hold your hand. You don't have to be afraid, we'll be home soon."

I stared blankly at the taller boy. We both knew that that last bit was not supposed to comfort me. Rather, it was the boy's attempt to comfort himself.

"I'm not," I assured. "That's why I want to see it better." I needed to determine the cause of death and whether I had any hand in it.

Sasuke's dark orbs narrowed. "You mean you actually _want_ to go there and take a look at the _corpse_?"

"Yeah."

Now the boy looked positively livid. "Are you crazy?! No, forget that–you _are_ crazy!"

"Yes, yes, you've made your point clear. Look, I'm not forcing you to stay. Just go home if you want to, but don't turn around," I instructed as I ducked under the boy's arm and ran to the direction of the tree.

"Brat! Come back here you r–"

I heard Sasuke faltered in his steps before he heaved his stomach content into the undergrowth. I glanced back, feeling my headache building. "You're okay there?"

Sasuke wiped his mouth with the sleeve of his shirt and glared at his brother's dispassionate expression. He inwardly wondered how the boy saw the world. Did he understand right from wrong? Did he understand sadness and happiness? Did he understand fear? Did he understand the concept of life and death? Did he understand social norm, that some things were simply unacceptable and should not be done?

Then again, it had only been a little more than two months since his first birthday. He might have grasped language at an _abnormally_ fast rate – granted, his pronunciations sounded weird, as if influenced by weird accent; and more often than not, he would mix his sentences with foreign words which were not exactly baby babble or mispronounced words of the common tongue – but that did not mean that he actually understood what those words meant, just like how he did not understand the gravity of the sight and situation before him.

There was a bloody and mauled human being hanging on that tree! Not only that, the corpse also still looked fresh, which meant his murderer could still be lurking around, which meant _they_ could be his or her next target. They needed to escape ASAP instead of dilly-dallying like a fool.

"I'm fine," Sasuke growled. His ninja training quickly overrode his shock and disgust. His hand slid into his kunai pouch, his eyes were trained into his surrounding for any sign of threat. "We have to go. This place is unsafe. The killer could still be here," he warned.

Sasuke averted his eyes to his baby brother again. He cursed under his breath when he saw the boy stood only few feet away from the tree. "Where do you think you're going?! You can contaminate the crime scene!"

The boy waved him off.

Sasuke gaped, honestly surprised by his baby brother's audacity. He inwardly wondered if the boy was the result of karma from all of those times when he bothered their oldest brother whenever the preteen was about to go on his mission.

I ignored the fuming boy. Instead, I warily observed the sight before me, my eyes embedding the grotesque images forever into my brain.

My lips curled into a grim line. I, for the life of me, still could not make some sense of the sight before me. It should have been impossible. However, for some reason, what I was seeing now just felt… right. Like a piece of puzzle, it simply clicked.

Previously I had thought that the man was murdered by the same vigilante that had healed me (the sounds that I heard and the wounds in my palm would be left unexplained, but it was the most logical conclusion that I could reach). However, now I was not sure if said vigilante even existed.

I saw it all now. I finally understood.

Everything that happened to the man was because of the tree.

From afar, it appeared to be an ordinary tree, indistinguishable from the various species that dot the landscape. Outwardly, it looked just like any other ordinary trees. It took an observant eye to notice the slightly more fearsome features of its branches, or the piles of human bones buried in between its giant roots, almost wholly submerged into the shallow crater. Once one saw through the illusion, it looked absolutely demonic. The evergreen leaves were replaced with crimson ones, as if they were dipped in fresh bloods. Its trunk, used to be light brown now turned dark, so dark it was almost black. On it protruded the tips of ribs and skulls from humans it had consumed. Their faces appeared as knots in its bark – their expression horrified, their silent screams unheard.

I could just imagine it as it waited for unsuspecting humans to pass underneath its branches. When somebody got close enough, it would attack, snatching its prey up with its long, jagged, finger-like branches, and hoisting them, up into its bough. Those branches would pierce the skin of their victims, sucking out all the blood with tube-like twigs. After the body was drained of everything it could take, the rest would be consumed by birds, insects, and other animals, until only dry bones fell back to earth. By the time most people were close enough to notice the heaps of bleached bones at the base of the tree, it was already too late to escape.

The only reason why I was still alive was because it already caught someone else to be its prey. Somebody had lost his life to satisfy its hunger. A man whom I did not even know, whose life was so easily discarded like it did not mean a thing, like he was nothing.

But still, unanswered questions continued to ring in my head. What had happened earlier? The sounds I heard and the sensations I felt were simply unnatural. They were too vivid, too real, as if I myself was the one that tortured and killed the man. Was the tree some sort of vengeful spirit? Punishing people who had done what it constituted as evil deeds, or perhaps randomly fulfilling wishes for vengeance. Because although I did _wish_ for him to die in my anger, I did not actually _mean_ it, nor did I want him to suffer from such torment.

Or did I?

Because as much as I thought the sight before me as despicable, I could not deny that I felt relieved by the man's death. I reasoned that it was because he could no longer hurt anyone again in his violent psychotic episode; and that he did not have to suffer from loss anymore, thus he could finally be at peace. However, more than anything, the way he died really piqued my curiosity.

What lured him into the forest, or rather, how _it_ lured him? How did the tree digest the bloods? Did it gain any nutrient or did it simply eat chakra? There were so many things that puzzled me and I wanted to understand. If I were given a choice to redo everything again, I did not think that I would warn the man or even try to prevent his death. I would let things happened the way they were. I would have watched even, just so that I could understand the mechanism. That way his life would have had some meaning, giving a contribution towards science instead of just another fodder who was waiting for his ticking number reach its end.

In a way the man already died since he lost his family. It was all reflected on his eyes. Beneath all of his hatred and anger, lied bottomless pit of anguish, grief, and loneliness. The tragedy that took his wife and son had thoroughly damaged him. He was alive, but he did not really live. He was like a mannequin, human on the outside, but soulless in the inside.

Even watching him now, I felt… nothing. I simply stared at him – or rather, the tree and him – with the same clinical detachment that I might have had when working on my experiments and researches. My eyes picked the way its branches leeched the remaining blood from the man's wound, inwardly noting that it would be more efficient if the tree simply sucked the blood out of him until the man died from blood loss, instead of killing him and _then_ drained him, because after death the blood would coagulate and pool at his lower legs and feet as well as lower arms and hands.

The position of the branches did suggest that it _was_ draining the man's blood, which brought forth the question of why it killed him before it had even done consuming him. There was a ligature mark – which suggested death by hanging; which also suggested that I was not hallucinating, which was relieving to know since all symptoms for the past months had indicated that I was suffering from schizophrenia – but there was no rope present.

I wondered if I really was the one who had somehow ended the man's life by releasing the 'rope', or if I was having some sort of mental connection with the haematophagy plant for some reason.

Something was missing, a red thread that supposed to connect all the clues and the pieces of puzzle that I had gathered. I refused to believe that this was some kind of magic or supernatural hullabaloo. Everything had an explanation, even in this strange world that pretty much ruined my definition of reality. I simply had not found it, _yet_.

I looked up when a hand touched my shoulder.

"We really need to go now," Sasuke informed. His eyes darted left and right, anywhere but meeting mine.

"Yeah." I needed to do a little experiment first, though.

I lifted my bleeding hand and held it upward – like an offering – towards the nearest tree branch, showing the jagged skin of my right palm. A big red perpendicular mark ran from the flesh on top of my hamate bone into the middle of my forefinger.

"What are you doing?!" Sasuke fidgeted impatiently.

"Making a friend."

I ignored Sasuke's 'you're crazy' look and decided to focus on the task at hand of observing every twitch of movement the tree made. At first there was no reaction, but slowly and steadily, I saw the finger-like branch inched closer.

 _Come on, come here_.

As if hearing my thought, one of its 'fingers' suddenly lengthened and moved in a wide arc towards me.

Sasuke jerked both of us backward in reflex. He dragged me to stand behind him, his posture defensive. "Stay back!"

The tree did not make any move except snapping a part of its lengthened branch and dropped it in front of Sasuke. The boy eyed it warily.

I tugged the boy's shirt. "I think it wants us to take it."

"Obviously," he mocked. "But what if it's poisonous, or causing rash, or worse – instant death?!"

"We won't know unless we take a look."

"How about you stop being stubborn, and we go home instead?" Sasuke hissed through gritted teeth.

"Why? Are you scared? It's just a twig, you know," I taunted.

If there was one thing that could make Sasuke do anything, it was his inferiority complex.

"You know what? Fine!" Sasuke lashed out. The boy kicked the branch in my direction. "Do whatever you want! I'm done with you! You can find your own way home – that is if the tree doesn't eat you first!"

"Be careful nii-san!" I bellowed with a big wave, prompting an infuriated shriek to escape the boy's throat. I couldn't suppress a laughter at the sight.

My expression sobered once the boy disappeared behind the tree lines, turning to its usual dull one again. I closed my eyes and waited until the boy was no longer within my sensing range before I turned to face the tree again. I could act more freely now that the boy was no longer here.

I squatted down and scrutinized the branch. It leaked deep crimson sap that looked alarmingly like human blood. Considering its diet, it would not be too far-fetched to presume it as one. But no, the substance didn't smell like blood – it had no smell, and it was too mucilaginous to be one – it looked more like red-currant jelly. I suspected it to have a similar property with kino – a natural gum with similar color that was produced by various plants and trees, particularly Eucalyptus, in reaction to mechanical damage – what with the way it crystallized around the branch's edges to seal its 'wound'. If it were indeed kino, then the sap should not be dangerous, since it was frequently used in traditional medicine. However, appearance could be deceiving. For all I know, the sap – and the branch – was just as toxic as that of a manchineel tree, and this was just one of the tree's ploys to eat me.

So why did it throw the branch? Was it some sort of friendly gesture to lure me? Was it, perhaps, trying to reverse psychology me? Because if it did, then the tree just opened up a whole new can of possibility of plants' consciousness.

I heaved a sigh and raked my fingers through my hair. I leaned my chin on my good fist and stared at the giant tree again, this time without my sharingan on.

"Just what are you?" I wondered out loud. "Are you a plant, honest to God plant with plant's instinct and intelligence, or perhaps a plant with an advanced mind? Do you have conscience? Can you self-reflect? Do you choose what you eat, or do you simply eat anyone that passed by?"

"I won't judge you for your diet, you know. I know that food often become scarce and that human can be quite a pain – especially with all of those illegal logging – and I know you're angry, but you cannot just eat anyone. People eventually will notice the disappearances," My eyes flickered to the corpse hanging by the tree. "Well maybe not him. But if things continue like this, sooner or later somebody will notice the pattern, and when that happen, your safety will be compromised."

"These people are terrifying – definitely not the kind of people that you want to mess with. They can sprout fire from their mouths, they can move real fast, they can destroy landscape within seconds, heck they can even revive the deaths. They can kill you with a snap of their fingers, but just like me, you only want to live, don't you? I don't think you ever ask to be born as a vampire tree, just like I never ask to be born again – not here, at least."

If the tree agreed with me, it did not give any indication of it. But still, it felt quite nice to have a companion that I could share my thoughts with without keeping the baby façade up.

My eyes unwillingly strayed into the hanging man unmoving body, showing neither disdain nor pity.

"You know, when you're dead, you see nothing, hear nothing. You smell nothing, taste nothing, and feel absolutely nothing. The life you've built for _decades_ , all the hardship that you've gone through; all of your dreams, your visions; everything that makes you, _you_ , are gone that very second your brain is dead. The next thing you know you are already six feet under, decomposing, and in your way on becoming the next plant nutrients, so I never understand how someone can take life like it means nothing."

I knew how hypocritical I had sounded, especially since I was the main suspect of the man's murder and I could not even show a shred of remorse towards what I had supposedly done.

"I don't take kindly to being assaulted, sir. I deserve to live just as much as you. Just because your life is miserable doesn't mean that you have the right to make others' too. Everyone suffers, one way or another. So if it turns out that I somehow have any hand in your demise, I apologize, but you should know that you brought it upon yourself."

I looked down into the ground and deeply bowed my head as a sign of condolence.

"Wherever you are right now, I sincerely hope that you're in a happy place, that you're reunited with your loved ones. Everything that has happened is now in the past, and I..." I felt the words died in my mouth.

"I…." _I forgive you._

The mere thought of saying them out loud felt uncomfortable. It felt pretentious – fake. I never said something that I did not mean before, and I did not want to start now.

Releasing a breath, I simply clamped my mouth shut and finished my rant with a cross sign.

"I'm sorry. May you rest in peace."

I closed my eyes and inhaled the fresh air, now feeling much better – so much lighter – after my heart-to-heart with a tree and a corpse. If that was not a testament of how pathetic my social life was – and my growing insanity – I did not know what was.

Oh well, get on with the business.

I activated my sharingan and averted my eyes to the branch that the tree had given me. It was still in the same position, thus it was probably unable to move independently once separated from the rest of its 'body'. The chakra within the branch was not diminishing, it… grew in quantity actually – _talking about greedy_ – as it drew energy from nature. Aside from that, my eyes did not pick up anything unusual. (Oh how I longed to be able to see on cellular level like Sasuke's future eyes did, that way I wouldn't have to bring microscope everywhere.)

I attentively touched the branch with my little finger, then moved to touch the sap, feeling encouraged when contact with the bark produced no harmful reaction whatsoever. As I suspected, the sap was similar to kino, but not quite. The crystallized sap was hard and durable – unlike kino, whose crystallization time could take hours and still produced a brittle sap, which could easily be rubbed into powder with fingers. So far was fine, the crystallized sap did me no harm. But what about the fresh liquid sap? Was it as safe as its solid counterpart?

I know I should not even be thinking about experimenting with a potentially dangerous chemical. However, the more I tried to convince myself that I was being reckless and compromising my own well-being, the more tempted I was to snap the damn branch and watched as the blood-red sap leaked into the ground.

Before I knew it, I already clamped the thin branch beneath my right armpit whilst my left hand tried to snap the surprisingly sturdy wood. It took more force than I expected, but it eventually worked. However, the crimson sap leaked faster than I expected. Some of it even dripped into the grazes in my palm. I felt alarmed at first, but it quickly turned into amazement as I watched the sap evaporated upon contact with the wounds, leaving an unblemished skin in its wake.

 _Good God..._

I immediately peeled the Band-Aid from my knee, activated my sharingan, and attentively dripped the excess sap from my palm into the wound.

The result was immediate. I giddily watched with perfect clarity as new granular skin tissues generated at the edges of the wound and worked their way towards the center at an astounding rate until they had covered the entirety of the lesion before they differentiated into corneocytes and returning into a normal and healthy skin. It was amazing how all of that process happened in less than five seconds, leaving not even a single scar tissue. It was literally cell regeneration on steroid.

Once my knee was completely healed, I continued to do the same thing with my right hand. Like the others, the wounds in my hand healed completely, although there were faint red lines in few places that suffered from the worst damage, barely noticeable once I deactivated my sharingan. They should naturally disappear on their own.

I exhaled a breath and closed my eyes, feeling the familiar dull, aching sensation behind my eyes after prolonged use of sharingan – and what I meant by prolonged barely scratched fifteen minutes mark, nothing in comparison with my fellow sharingan user that could activate them for hours and still did not break any sweat, which if I ignored the age and chakra reserve factors was just plain pathetic.

I twirled the tree stem on my hand, watching as the sap crystallized at the fracture points. Technically I could plant this at home – because there was no way that Fugaku would let me out again once he saw how disastrous a simple trip to the park could be – its sap would be very useful for future use. Its appearance was fairly average, nothing in comparison with the beautiful plants that Mikoto kept in her garden, thus no one should really noticed it. However, there were the matters of how to feed it and how to keep it hidden in plain sight. If I could see its real appearance, then so did half of the village, especially once it started to grow, and God forbid, eat random passerby.

I made up my mind not a second later by rising up to my feet and shoved the stem into my pocket. I inwardly shook my head at my own behavior, _the things I do for science._

My eyes fell at the tree again, for some reason I could not suppress my smile. Never in a million years would I ever think that I would meet such a morbidly fascinating specimen. However, as much as I liked to stay here for few more hours, I really needed to go home. The longer I stayed here, the further my distance from Sasuke would be, and with my awful navigation skill and limited sensing range, it would be in my best interest to follow Sasuke before the boy completely disappeared from my radar.

"So… I will return home now," I announced. I did not know why. "It's a... pleasure, to meet you. Thank you for the sap, I've healed well. I hope this," I gestured to my pocket, "can grow well too."

I fidgeted under the silence that greeted me. The sounds of birds' chirping in the background did not make it any less awkward. It was only now that I finally registered just how demented I must have looked.

"Anyway, once again…" I glanced upwards, towards the thick branches and the copious amount of lush leaves that decorated the tree – searching for something, anything, that could make me stay a bit longer.

I did not find any.

 _All right._ "Thank you for everything. Good luck, and… goodbye."

I gave the tree a big wave and jogged into Sasuke's direction, following the blue ball of energy that I saw in my head. The thought of being lost and unable to eat spurred me to run even faster.

Halfway into my journey, just as I was getting closer into Sasuke, something unexpected happened.

The tree answered.

Just as I no longer cared about its consciousness, just as I pushed the thought about the blood-eating tree into the back of my mind, said goddamn tree _finally_ answered.

" _You're welcome,_ _Meister_ ," it said.

I could not help it,

I laughed.

* * *

 **Thank you for reading this chapter. Thank you for favoriting and following my story. Your reviews, especially, really make my day.**

 **I sincerely want to improve my writing, so all critics are welcomed. If it is possible, please tell me which part you like best and which part you hate, and why.**

 **Check out my other story, "Iridescent".**


	7. Know Thy Self, Know Thy Enemy

Disclaimer: Naruto belongs to Masashi Kishimoto. However, the OCs do belong to me.

* * *

 _"Know the enemy and know yourself; in a hundred battles you will never be in peril. When you are ignorant of the enemy, but know yourself, your chances of winning or losing are equal. If ignorant both of your enemy and yourself, you are certain in every battle to be in peril."_

 _ **Sun Tzu, The Art of War**_

* * *

 **Project 001**

 **Day 7, Log 009**

 _Subject's roots' growth continues in exponential rate – very fast for a hardwood tree. They show similar destructive characteristic of_ _Ficus benjamina_ _'s roots – caution for the possibility of subject's connection to its parent tree through root system; disturbing possibility of clone colony._

 _Subject's stem's growth is still fairly slow, possibly due to the lack of nutrients._

 _Subject's taxon remains indeterminate. No flowers, fruits, or seeds have been sighted. Current known characteristics still indicate it to be a dicot, possibly a eucalyptus. Further observations are recommended._

 _Subject has not shown new peculiar behavior. Its diet remains the same as its parent plant, i.e. blood. Subject has not shown the ability to catch its own prey, currently still relying on daily blood intake from observer (24 mL/24 hours)._ _ **Needs another donor.**_

 _The full extent of subject's – and subsequently parent plant's – prowess remains unknown._

 _P.S. Find iron supplements._

 _P.P.S. Devise another plan to visit the parent plant._

 _P.P.P.S. Evolve sharingan for observation purpo–_

"Little brother?" A voice called from the door.

The pencil in my hand halted.

I shut my eyes, briefly identifying the person's chakra signature whilst I used my free hand to cover my journal with a plethora of children books. A big a drawing book was placed at the very top. I then switched my pencil for a green crayon, drawing various shapes on the paper.

"Yes?" I answered.

I threw a glance over my shoulder. Itachi was approaching me whilst carrying a plate of dumplings and sweets on his hand. The preteen really liked those, I noticed.

I quickly squashed the irrational – or rational – fear that were always rearing their heads whenever Itachi was nearby. It was unfair to the boy, as he had not done me any wrong, _yet_ – the cynical part of me quickly supplied. I ushered the thought away, it was counterproductive to my effort to have a healthier state of mind. Observing and researching the plant had been a good decision, it gave me purpose – something to occupy my mind with. I did not want a setback on my progress and I certainly did not want to revert to my old shove-the-bad-feelings-down-a-dark-hole habit.

Itachi must have been coming to inspect my eyes again, just like what he had done for the last six days, either out of Fugaku's order or his own volition. So far, he had done nothing but being a good and caring sibling, thus he deserved to be treated with the same respect. It was unfair to treat him like a monster simply because of something that he might or might not do in the future. Hopefully the boy would not be too offended if I still cringed whenever I was within his proximity. God knew I'd tried.

Itachi sat cross-legged, a good respectful distance away from the puzzle pieces and the toy blocks that I had purposely cluttered around my personal space. He put his plate in from of him, his eyes skimmed over my drawing as he stuffed a pink-colored dumpling into his mouth. "What are you drawing?"

I glanced at the vaguely humanoid drawing. It had long, pointy ears, two droopy eyes, along with short malnourished limbs. It could have been Sméagol, if Sméagol was green and frequently smoked weed.

"Yoda," I decided.

Itachi nodded thoughtfully, earnestly indulging my nonsense like a good brother even though the word meant absolutely nothing for him.

"What are those?" He pointed to the small circles that were hovering near the green glob.

"Those are…" I did not know what those were, they resembled cat feces, "...seagulls?"

"Is that so?" Itachi quirked a brow. "What are they doing?"

"Poking Yoda's head."

The corner of the boy's lips twitched into a smile. "Does that make Sasuke a Yoda then?"

Yoda was not a noun, I almost said. Yoda and Sasuke were a complete opposite – personality wise, I would have said. However, showing such level of comprehension would raise questions and cause suspicions regarding my actual mental capability. Suspicious ninja was a dangerous ninja, especially one of Itachi's caliber.

On the other hand, I _did_ plan to tell Itachi some things – just enough to nudge him into the right direction – which hopefully could mitigate the casualty to the absolute minimum should the massacre happen. However, to be taken seriously, I needed to act beyond my supposed age, which could backfire and put me in an undesirable position.

My indecisiveness regarding the matter had been eating away at my conscience for the past one week. I might never know my clansmen personally, it might even take me forever to truly see them as anything more than drawings, however ethics dictated that I reduced harm, thus that was precisely what I was going to do – if I could gather the courage to do it first, that is.

I put the crayon down and steeple my fingers together, hoping that I would be taken somewhat more seriously with the gesture. It was now or never.

"Nii-san, may I ask you something?"

Itachi smiled encouragingly. "Go ahead."

"Something has been brewing in our clan. It has always been there, but not… not quite like this. The atmosphere and the people just feel… ill at ease. Mother and father – and you – are rarely home," I maintained our eye contact. "What's going on, brother?"

Logically speaking, Itachi would either lie and/or deflect my question under the pretense of protecting my 'innocence', or tell me the honest truth since I was insignificant in the grand scheme of things (it was not like I could report it to anyone) – it might even help him to unwind a bit.

"You've grown so much," Itachi observed.

I forced myself not to tense.

"I do miss a lot of things, don't I?" Itachi smiled wistfully. "I wasn't there when you were born, I wasn't there when you speak your first word, I wasn't there to cheer you up when you were sad, I wasn't there to help you fight your illness…."

I had half a mind to call Itachi out on his deflection, however the mention of my illness made me pause. The preteen might be able to shed some light regarding what had happened to me after I was born.

Itachi rubbed his eyes, bringing my attention to his pronounced tear-troughs. "You said that you felt our turmoil, correct?"

I cautiously nodded, inwardly wondering if I should have phrased my inquire differently.

I could feel how uneasy the people around me was starting to become, it was almost like everyone in the clan – barring Sasuke – had been attacked by a plague of despair. On few occasions I could even feel their emotions without going into what I now dubbed as a 'sensory mode'. I would be lying if I said that it was not disconcerting.

Itachi shuffled closer to me before he continued. "Father once told me this story when I was a child, a story of our ancestors. He said that they used to practice this religion: ninshū, it was called – the peaceful precursor of modern ninjutsu. The teachings of ninshū were meant to give people a better understanding of themselves, as well as others, and lead the world into an era of peace."

Itachi paused to make sure that I was listening to him. I motioned him to go on.

"In this religion they were taught how to connect their spiritual energies with one another, which then would allow them to understand each other without communication and pray for one another's safety."

"Do you think that that's what I am doing, this… ninshū?"

I tried my best to keep the skepticism out of my face, because that would imply that I understood what a spiritual energy was. I admit that I had done some reading with what I suspected was Itachi's old textbooks the other day, and the book that covered the topic of chakra had mentioned that the spiritual energy was derived from the mind's consciousness, which would not make Itachi's story entirely implausible. However, it was not wrong of me to expect a better explanation that was not based on a flimsy legend, was it?

"Well, it's either that, or your… illness… is acting up again."

 _Now, we're talking_ , I thought. "What's the disease?"

Itachi pursed his lips. "That's the problem, we don't know."

My brows raised. "What do you mean you don't know?"

Itachi shook his head. "It is exactly like I said. In every human being, both civilians and ninja alike, one's spiritual and physical energies are supposed to rest at a perfectly balanced ratio until one begin to manipulate one's chakra, but yours are already disproportionate from the moment that you are born."

I ignored how Itachi had indirectly stated that I was not a human being and that I was apparently the only one who suffered from such disease. "What's the ratio?"

Itachi seemed like he wanted to ask whether I understood what a ratio was, but thought better of it. "If I'm not mistaken, Father said that when you were born the ratio is roughly 9:1, in favor of your spiritual energy."

It was a huge difference.

If I applied the logic from the book into my case, it would be understandable for my spiritual and physical energies' ratio to be disproportionate, since my mind was that of an adult whilst my body was that of an infant. However, considering how intricately connected the chakra pathway system with the physiological systems of the human body in this world, I had to wonder how my dysfunctional chakra did not lead into, say, a dysfunctional skeletal system or something of the sort.

"Isn't it supposed to be harmful?" I inquired. "Balance is very important, right?"

"Logically, it should. Even the medics are quite baffled when you show no further sign of adverse effect, save for that one time after your birth." Itachi admitted. "I'm not sure how your body regulate the excess spiritual energy, but I do not think that it is possible to expel pure energy. It could be through Yin Release, however subconsciously – since our clan predominantly inherit it – but I'm not sure if it is possible when you are barely more than an infant yourself. Who knows." Itachi shrugged and plucked another dessert from his plate. "I'm just glad that you are okay now. "

"So am I…" I mumbled. I did not think that I would be able to handle the sheer helplessness of being bedridden on top of being an infant. "But… what's a Yin Release, brother?" I remembered that the book had only mentioned it in passing. "Does it represent spiritual energy, or maybe it _is_ spiritual energy, or does it have something to do with the ratio of the energies again? Is it nature trans–"

"Slow down," Itachi chuckled heartily, "I won't go anywhere. I have an afternoon shift today, so we still have some time to spend."

"You better," I jokingly threatened. I did not think that I would dare to truly threaten Itachi even if I were under gunpoint. "Sasuke-nii said that you always bailed on him."

Itachi waved his dango stick at me. "In my defense, Sasuke always approaches me at the wrong time. Our schedules simply no longer match up." Itachi briefly glanced at the panda clock on the wall. "Speaking of schedule, it is time for you to eat."

Itachi's free hand suddenly moved and my self-preservation instinct triggered my sharingan. I saw a burst of chakra from his hand into the tiny matrix on one of the beads on his bracelet. There was a puff of smoke before my sippy cup appeared on Itachi's hand.

"Teach me that," I blurted out. I if could seal my belongings away, then I would not have to fear the possibility of being discovered by busybodies. Hiding my journal every time someone barged into my room unannounced was getting absolutely tedious.

Itachi only smiled. "When you're older, okay?" He handed me the defrosted breast milk. I could not help my disappointed frown. I supposed it meant that Mikoto was away – _again_. "I have a great story to tell you."

My brows furrowed. "But… aren't you going to answer my questions?"

"I will," Itachi assured, "but I want to tell you about its origin first. That way you will have a deeper and more complete understanding of it – and hopefully, what chakra is as a whole."

"Okay," I relented.

Itachi set his plate aside and sat more comfortably on the fluffy carpet. "Alright, here we go…"

I took a small sip from the cup and deactivated my sharingan with a blink.

"Thousands of years ago," Itachi began, "long before the world was the place that we now know, there was once a wise man that had such a mastery over Yin and Yang that he used Yin to create form from nothing, and then used Yang to breathe life into what he had created. This wise man was known as the Sage…"

* * *

"We can't go on like this forever," I told my pet plant.

I was lying on the veranda whilst sipping another cup of milk after feeding the plant with my blood. It had been almost thirty minutes since Itachi had left to attend his ANBU duties. I still had approximately an hour or two to be on my own devices before Sasuke came home.

The fact was, my total blood volume was low, which meant that the amount of blood that I could safely lose in a 24-hour period was also low. I had used Nadler's equation, I'd even adjusted the result with Gilcher's Rule of Five just to make sure; I had calculated the number through correlation between log blood volume with log height and through reference book method, but all methods showed similar results: if I did not find other alternatives, then the plant would suffer from malnutrition, and more than likely – died.

Leaving it in the open was out of the question, who knew what it would do to random passerby. I could not steal the blood from blood banks either. I doubted that those institutions could exist in a world that was filled with people with bloodline limit and other peculiar traits, I knew that I would not hesitate to raid them in a heartbeat. They left hunting for canon fodders as the only option. The thought made me feel uneasy.

 _"You could always create them yourself, Meister,"_ echoed the raspy timbre inside my head, a.k.a. the sycophantic tree that would only conveniently appear whenever I was contemplating about its 'child's' meal.

"It's not that simple," I reasoned. "Yes, I can generate plenty of red blood cells using cord blood CD34+ cells as stem cells." My mind riveted into the calculation that I had made in my notebook. "If it were done correctly, the CD34+ cells from one cord blood unit should generate up to 4×10^14 red blood cells, which are equivalent to 500 blood transfusion units in the clinical application. The problem is, how am I supposed to do _that_ when I don't even own an adequate lab, or any of the necessary ingredient and equipment for that matter? I assure you, if I could get it done, I would have done it by now."

 _"But you created me,"_ it insisted like a broken record.

I sighed.

I was not sure how one should convince a sentient tree that one was not its creator without having a prolonged and futile biology lecture. I had tried to do it on the first few days of our acquaintance, but the blasted thing was quite adamant about it, thus I continued to stray from the subject – until now.

"Right..." I murmured drily. "And how exactly did I create you?"

 _"The same way that you created all of your creations. I can sense your energy in one, in that strange metal under–"_

I choked on my milk and descended into a violent coughing spasm.

 _"Meister, are you alright? Are you hurt–"_

"The bullet," I wheezed, "the bullet is real?!"

 _"Is that what its name was?–"_

I tuned it out and sprinted into my room.

Upon my arrival, I quickly lied face down on the floor and slipped my arm under the wooden dresser. I ignored the disgusting dusts and spider webs that brushed against my skin. I tried to reach further, but my arm was not long enough.

I was beginning to get frustrated, inwardly wishing for the bullet to simply roll into my hand, when I felt something cold brushed against the tip of my finger not a moment later.

 _Scratch, scratch, scritchy-scratch._

The thing pushed a small, cylindrical metal, rounded on its front, onto my palm. It moved slowly, wriggling like a worm – tapping, tapping, tapping – its uneven nail dragging on my skin.

I immediately pulled my hand out. The metal harshly collided against my glasses in my hastiness, which cause ugly grazes to appear on the right lens. I barely had the time to process the fact that the bullet was real – that my eyes were not playing tricks on me, that I was not hallucinating – let alone the fact that I had actually _vomited_ an intact bullet when I was only few weeks old. No . . . My whole attention was fixated on the finger in front of me, on the appendage that was clinging to me like how infants would to their mothers' chests.

My eyes bled red, but the illusion did not disappear. For a moment I was paralyzed, unable to tear my gaze away from the pink-white digit.

Just what was the finger attached to? What could it be attached to?

It was an abnormally long finger, extending from the place where it was connected with mine into somewhere beneath the dresser. The nail was neither bitten nor unusually long, the tip was simply jagged from too much friction – from too much scratching. Though its skin looked deceptively human, its touch was as smooth and cold as a porcelain doll.

The chakra that coursed through it, however, was undoubtedly mine.

I jerked my fingers, feeling relieved when I saw that there were still ten of them. For one alarming moment I almost thought that they would detach themselves from my palms and floated away.

 _"Pretty, isn't it?"_ the tree remarked, as if it were observing a simple flower. _"You always create most peculiar things, Meister."_

The finger wiggled.

I swallowed a bile. "W-why would I create that?"

 _"Why did you create me?"_

"I didn't." I finally snapped.

 _"Yes, you did!"_

I felt my upper lip rising and falling in an unconscious snarl as a sudden rush of rage burnt me. "Why would I create a murderer?! Why would I create an abomination like you?"

 _"Because you are a wretch."_

I flinched at the accusation.

" _Why are you so surprised?"_ it asked, sounding utterly baffled. _"You have no love for this place, let alone its inhabitants."_

"Shut up."

 _"Do you still remember that man, the man that you wanted dead?–"_

"He's just a drawing."

 _"–Only his bones remain – but why should it matter when you already have his decomposition rate, yes? So what is next? You can sever someone's hands, switch them around, and then sew them again so that when the hands are positioned palms down, the thumbs will be on the outside while the little fingers will–"_

"That's enough!" I growled. "Be quiet before I make you."

It complied.

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, feeling the horrid pressure in my head increasing. I did not know what was happening anymore. I was completely out of my depth and I despised how helpless it made me feel. Either I was completely deranged, or the world was the one that had truly gone mad.

Reasoning that the strange things that had occurred happened because I suffered from schizophrenia might feel less terrifying. At least if I were mad I would know what I should do, I would know what drugs I should take, and I would know what kind of treatment I had to do to fix myself. However, loath as I was to admit it, what the plant had said did explain how my body could prevent itself from collapsing inward. Yin Release – or at least a bastardized version of it – seemed to be the best method that my body could employ to discard the excess spiritual energy whilst losing the least amount of physical energy as possible.

It was, after all, by definition, based on the spiritual energy that governed imagination and was created by altering the ratio of spiritual and physical energy in favor of the former. It could – at least in the Sage legend that Itachi told me – create form out of nothingness. The legend was probably exaggerated, a complete nonsense even – or perhaps I misinterpreted it – because not only did that violate the principle of matter conservation, in the later part of the story I was sure that Itachi had told me how the wise Sage had defeated the big bad monster by dividing it into nine beasts with anger management issues (his words, not mine).

My take on the technique itself was that the Yin Release converted energy, probably chakra, of one object and/or of the user, to form a different object, instead of merely spitting things into existence to its user's heart content. I doubted that such a simple mechanism was all that there was to it, I would need to conduct further experiments to comprehend how it worked though. Still, amidst of all the uncertainties, there was one thing that I was absolutely sure of:

"You're lying," I accused the tree. "There's no way that I could create you." The tree's massive size and the sheer number of skeletons that were buried underneath it were far too massive for a tree that allegedly only existed for fourteen months at most

The finger, I could understand. If I somehow had unknowingly created something during my stress episode, it would have been something that could compensate my then useless limbs – it would have been something that could fill the silence when the quietness became a tad bit unbearable. The tree, on the other hand, did not make any sense. If I could create anything to curb my loneliness, I would have created a puppy instead of a grotesque parasite to keep me company.

The tree remained silent.

I sighed.

I eyed the finger on my hand with a grimace. "Shoo, off you go. Please return to your… habitat or whatever." I imagined that it would a dark and dingy space where Eldritch abominations resided. "Thank you for your help."

The finger detached itself from my hand and dropped onto the floor with a plop. It swiftly retreated under the dresser, squirming and twitching. One moment it was there and the next second it disappeared, as if it had never been there in the first place.

I sat up and blinked, trying to erase the freakish image from my mind. Ah, who was I kidding, I would come to examine its motor skill later.

I deactivated my sharingan and lowered my ruined glasses onto the tip of my nose. I squinted my eyes in order to accommodate my now blurry vision, not that the tree could see me anyway.

"You cannot ignore me forever," I reminded it. "I've been nothing but honest to you, even when things are not going well, so the least that you can do is to show me the same courtesy." My eyes narrowed. "Don't make me regret investing my time in you."

 _"Very well…"_ the tree finally relented. _"I admit that you did not exactly create me, per se. I came from a seed, just like many of my kind. The atmosphere and the terrain nourish me, allow me to grow stronger, so does the blood of thousands of warriors that saturate the soil._

 _"But then you…_ you _gave me life. Your gifted me with mind, the ability to think beyond my basic instinct. It's a very strange feeling and I am not sure what to do with it. I'm still trying to understand these… emotions._

 _"I_ _am hungry, I want to eat, but you told me that it is dangerous – that it is wrong. But why is it wrong for me to feed from your kind when yours consume many of mine? Natural energy takes too long to gather, it may take me another thousand years before I can bear a fruit. Warriors' blood, on the other hand, are rich with chakra and will fasten the process."_

Although the tree was . . . unconventional, to say the least, even more so than the freakish people that inhabited this biosphere, I understand where it was coming from. Based on the information that it had given me, the tree was only capable of producing one fruit at the time and each fruit took a really long time to be conceived. Fruit contained seed, which was a tool for the tree to propagate itself. If it took the tree a thousand years for one fruit to be produced, then the tree would go extinct in no time – unless, of course, it evolved to consume another source of chakra, which in its case was human blood.

"Alright, I understand your concern, uh–" I paused. "Excuse me, what's your name again?"

 _"Humans used to refer to my kind as the Shinju."_

I frowned.

Did that mean silk-cotton tree? It could also mean newly green tree of early summer, double suicide, pearl, and tree heaven (or was it heaven tree?).

This was exactly why I preferred written Japanese. Although the language had numerous homophones, in its written form I could read the kanji to understand their meaning. Of course, kanji were not available in spoken Japanese. Spoken Japanese had pitch accent instead, which I was not proficient enough to discern, thus I had to break down and interpret sentences based on their context and syntax as the speaker spoke. I would be lucky if the speaker did not include confusing collocation of words and idioms in their speech. It was part of the reason why I liked using sharingan, it slowed everything down, even speech.

I rubbed my temple to alleviate my headache. The neurons in my brain were boiling after translating so much gibberish. I could really use a nap right now.

"Okay…" I murmured. "Let's just– let's skip the introduction. Don't interrupt me until I'm done, okay?" I did not wait for its reply before I began my explanation. "Your main problem is your lack of coverage towards your sources of nutrients. The last time we've met, you've shown tropic movement in response to my blood. I've also seen the roots in the stem that you've given me, their growth rates are _exceptional_. We can use them to your advantage."

Now, I did not know if the impulse to help the tree was spurred from being a National Geographic fan or if it was simply my inner environmentalist speaking, but I felt obligated to save the tree from the brink of extinction.

What could go wrong anyway? It was just a tree – a strange one, albeit – certainly befitting this equally strange world.

I took a deep breath before I continued, "So here's what I want you to do, I want you to make a pseudo-clonal colony..."

* * *

"What happened to your glasses?" Sasuke asked.

It was already late afternoon by the time Sasuke returned from his after school training. The sun was painting the clouds in a splash of orange and red as it slowly dipped below the horizon, about to set.

Sasuke settled comfortably on the tatami mat in the living room, a weapon pouch and a roll of wire strings were placed neatly on the brown coffee table. Droplets of water from the shower dripped from his wet hair into his fresh shirt.

I glanced at the boy's direction. "You notice it too?"

Sasuke regarded me strangely, as if I was a particularly demented dolt. "Of course I do. I'm not blind."

I dug my hand into my pocket and held the bullet between my thumb and forefinger. "What about this?"

Sasuke's gaze flickered to the metal in my hand, he rolled his eyes not a second later. "Exactly which part of 'I'm not _blind'_ that you don't understand?"

I ignored Sasuke's comment and shoved back the bullet into my pocket. The boy could see it too, which meant that what had happened was not just an elaborate hallucination that my brain had conjured. Everything was not just in my head. I was sane.

"For your information, I don't know what has happened. By the time I woke up from my nap, it's already like this."

Sasuke crossed his arms. "Do you think I'm stupid? I know you long enough to know that 'I don't know' is your equivalent of freak accident. Come on, spill. I can't cover for you if you won't tell me what's going on."

I sighed. "You don't have to cover for me."

"Yes, I do," Sasuke insisted. "You covered for me last week, now I want to return the favor. Father would have disowned me if he knew that your eyes were injured while you were in my watch."

I sighed again. "Don't be dramatic, Sasuke, he loves you more than you know it. Also, that incident was on me."

I lifted my glasses by its bridge and observed the now-absent scratches on its right lens. What used to be a horrendous, too-big frame with unfitting bridge (apparently, no infant in Konoha wore glasses) was now replaced with a fitting frame that has a proper bridge that did not slide down my nose, spring hinges, and cable temples.

It was funny how the glasses perfectly matched the one that I had in mind, when less than few hours ago – before my exhaustion and pounding headache finally claimed me – I had willed (and begged) my glasses to fix itself for more than an hour to no avail. The whole experience was embarrassing, demeaning, and only cemented my belief that I was truly inadequate at doing anything ninja.

"Besides," I continued, "when you help someone, you should do it out of the kindness of your heart, not because you're expecting something in return."

Sasuke made a face. "That doesn't make any sense. It's like doing missions without getting paid, which is stupid. How are you supposed to buy food and clothes if you're not getting paid?" Sasuke asked, affronted. "And your bleeding eyeballs is definitely _not_ on you – unless you poke them with a stick yourself – which once again, is really stupid, which you are not. You may be crazy, but you're not stupid. No brother of mine is stupid."

My brows furrowed. I did not know whether I should be offended or flattered. "Err… thanks?"

Sasuke, the birdbrain, grinned. "No probl–" He cut himself short, his eyes suddenly narrowed. "Hey, what's that?"

I put my glasses on and blinked owlishly at the now-focused calligraphy that adorned the wall on my left. The lenses had been upgraded too, apparently. I then turned back to Sasuke. "What's what?"

"That stain on your T-shirt."

I looked down on the brown stain near my collar. "Oh, that…" I had completely forgotten about it, too preoccupied with contemplating about my glasses. "I had a nosebleed when I was asleep."

"Why didn't you tell me?!" Sasuke cried loudly. "You could die!"

I quickly held my hands up in a calming gesture. "Statistically speaking, deaths that are caused from just a nose bleed are very rare, so rare that they are almost unheard-of. Yes, the blood from the nosebleed could cause suffocation, and yes, enough blood loss could cause issues with the heart. But I'm well now, it was probably caused by the dry air, so please don't worry about it. You don't owe me anything."

"That is definitely _not_ helping and completely beside the point!" Sasuke ranted. "You're my little brother, I'll always be worried about you – even if you're crazy and annoying – because that's what big brother do–" The boy's jaw abruptly snapped shut with an audible click.

Sasuke slowly moved to stand whilst throwing a wary glance at every corner of the room. "Have you eaten yet?" he asked out of the blue whilst his hands inched onto his weapons. "You look pale."

I felt dread knot at the pit of my stomach. "What's wrong?" I asked lowly.

The boy pointed his finger to the calligraphy at the entrance, more accurately to the character at the bottom of the poem, where a horizontal strike had appeared in the middle of the other two strokes, changing its meaning.

Three, it now read.

Apprehension quickly dawned into me. Fear and anxiety soon followed, tinged with a hint of paranoia. The word 'intruder' blared over and over inside my brain like the Purge siren.

Would it happen today – tonight? No . . . This was not the massacre, I told myself, not yet. It was too soon. Itachi would not just kill everyone, kill _me_ , when this very morning – one of the very few rare moments where he actually sat and had a decent conversation with me – I had seen him smiled and laughed and simply enjoyed himself like his supposed age, would he . . . ?

I dug my nails into my palms and forced myself to breathe. This was not the time to be anxious and wallow in self-pity. Everything was not over yet, _I_ was not over yet. I am not weak, I told myself, I am not helpless.

"No, I haven't," I answered out loud. 'Kitchen?' I mouthed afterwards. That was where the backdoor was located. The last time I checked it was opened.

Sasuke shook his head ever so slightly. 'Not sure,' he mouthed back.

I beckoned the boy to follow me as I creeped into the foyer. Red bled into my Iris as I scanned the center of the ward at the front door.

"It's gone," I breathed. The thing that separated me from the outside world was there no more. "The ward is gone."

"But that's impossible," Sasuke whispered, aghast. "Only father, mother, and big brother can disable the seal, they obviously won't do it. If it's deactivated, then there's nothing that can prevent intruders from getting in anymore."

I massaged my temples. I was sure that Mikoto and Fugaku would not do it, why would they? Itachi, on the other hand . . .

Sasuke gripped his blade tighter. Beads of sweat were starting to trickle down his neck. "What should we do now? We're a sitting duck in here, everyone is at the clan meeting in the Naka Shrine."

"We can run," I quickly suggested. Although the compound was located on the outskirt and isolated from the village, our desperation should more than make up for the lengthy distance. "I don't sense anyone outside."

Sasuke shook his head again. "We can't rely on that. Skilled ninja are able to change their chakra signature and make them seem larger or smaller, some can even suppress their chakra to the point that they become completely undetectable. Sure, they won't be able to use ninjutsu and genjutsu, but they don't exactly need those to eliminate an academy student and a toddler."

It was at that exact moment that I truly realized what my ignorance had cost me. As much as the mere thought of them made my skin crawl, I had to learn more about ninja in order to survive this world. Trial and error would only take me so far, I could not rely on them forever.

"So what do we do now?" I murmured flatly.

"I don't know..." Sasuke whispered. "Someone who can trespass the Military Police' Chief's house is not someone to be trifled with. We won't even stand a chance." The boy released a shuddering breath and squeezed his eyes shut. "Kami… we're going to die."

"We're not," I promised him, "not as long as I have any say in it. Think reasonably, the trespasser might not be here to hurt us, so don't lose hope just yet." I twined our hands together, exactly like how Sasuke used to do before I could fully walk on my own, and gave his hand a firm squeeze. "What's the law say about this?"

Sasuke squeezed my hand back, a silent gratitude for the minute distraction, and took a deep, calming breath before he cited the passage that he undoubtedly memorized just to impress Fugaku. "Under the terms of the Defense and the Dwelling Act, property owners or residents are entitled to defend themselves with force, up to and including lethal force. Any individual who uses force against a trespasser is not guilty of an offense if he or she honestly believes they were there to commit a criminal act and a threat to life."

"See," I gave the boy a small, assuring smile, "we're not helpless. We can still defend ourselves. This is _our_ home, we know it better than anyone else. We can lay some traps that will lure them out and make them leave while we hide somewhere safe. We can survive this."

"And if they don't…" Sasuke trailed off, voice barely audible.

I looked at the boy right in the eyes, my answer was resolute.

"Then I'll kill them."

* * *

 **A/N:** The Defense and the Dwelling Act is based on Irish Criminal Law (Defense and the Dwelling) Act 2011.

 **Thank you for reading this chapter. Thank you for favoriting and following my story. Your reviews, especially, really make my day.**

 **I sincerely want to improve my writing, so all critics are welcomed. If it is possible, please tell me which part you like best and which part you hate, and why.**

 **Check out my other story, "Iridescent".**


	8. Pedestrian at Best

Disclaimer: Naruto belongs to Masashi Kishimoto. However, the OCs do belong to me.

* * *

" _For after all, the best thing one can do when it is raining is let it rain."_

 _ **Henry Wadsworth Longfellow**_

* * *

"They haven't move yet?" Sasuke asked quietly.

I shook my head, concentrating at the task at hand.

Sasuke and I were currently hiding in the master bedroom, the closest enclosed room that we could reach in short time. The room itself was rather plain, very practical for a ninja family, but adequately stocked with hidden weapons and first aid kits.

My home-alone-inspired-plan and bravado had pretty much abandoned me since I entered this room. The chance was, anything that I could come up with would be easily dissembled by professional ninja. I'd rather play it safe, since it was not only my life that was at stake. Sasuke and I had decided that we would avoid confrontation unless necessary.

Speaking of it, there were three unidentified mass of chakra. All of them were considerably dimmer, heavily suppressed. Two chakra signatures had immediately appeared as soon as the intruder had dropped his incognito mode – perched in our neighbors rooftops – their positions flanked him in defensive pattern. They then had entered those houses, lurking around for only God knew why. The intruder himself was close by, currently standing on the living room that Sasuke and I had previously occupied.

Although their purpose was still unclear, I was certain that they were not here to commit murder. There was no one to assassinate in the compound except Sasuke and I. If they wanted to kill us, they would have done it already. Robbery was also unlikely, though not impossible, but I doubted that that they would find anything profitable from the rooms they visited.

"I think I know what they're doing. . ." Sasuke whispered over my shoulder, his eyes were trained on the paper before me. "They don't go to the bedrooms or the bathrooms, but they always stop by the living rooms and the dining rooms – everywhere where people usually gather to gossip and chat."

I barely glanced at the dots that littered the blueprint of the compound that Sasuke had stolen from Fugaku's adjacent office, too caught up with calculating and scribing the intruders ever-changing positions in accordance with the blueprint's scale.

"I think," Sasuke hesitantly continued, "I think they're–"

"They're moving again," I interrupted Sasuke, getting tired with his incessant chatter. From the nasty glare that the boy aimed at me, he knew perfectly well that it was intentional.

I quickly scanned the blueprint with my sharingan, memorizing the image of each house plans into my memory – inwardly musing about how easy college would've been if I had possessed them back then. I then grabbed my black marker, shoved it into my pocket, and ran to the door.

"Come on!"

Sasuke's feature twisted into an ugly scowl. "Just so that you know," he seethed, "my opinion still stand! This whole thing is ridiculous! It's a safety _hazard_! Mother is _so_ going to have my head!"

I sighed.

 _And yet_ , I thought, _the boy still refused to mind his own business_.

I crouched on the foyer, nimbly dodging away with practiced ease when Sasuke tried to help me put my shoes on. "Perhaps," I said, "but if it could save life, then it's certainly worth doing. There are still dozens of houses left, houses which belong to our _family_. They could be planting bombs for all we know, it's better to be safe than sorry."

Well, at least that was what I told myself as I tried to justify my reckless behavior. It was a farce, of course. I had other activity in mind that certainly had absolutely _nothing_ to do with saving people that I had little to no connection with, barring our surname.

Not waiting for Sasuke's answer, I creeped past the front lawn into the deserted street. In my mind-eye, I could see that the intruders had started to explore their next targets.

" _Are we doing it tonight, Meister?"_ the tree asked.

"Yes," I muttered. I stopped and crouched beside a nearby neighbor's bushes-covered fence to draw crude floor plans of the houses before marking them with their infiltrators' respective positions, inwardly cursing them for moving so quickly. "Have you connected with the stem? You do understand what you have to do next, don't you?"

In conjecture with my plan to provide my pet-plant – and consequently, its parent-plant – with adequate nutrients, the tree was supposed to send out wide-ranging lateral roots that would send up erect stems in predesignated locations. From all above-ground appearances, the new stems would look like individual trees. The process then would be repeated until a whole stand, of what appear to be individual trees, was formed. This collection of multiple stems would remain connected through the root system, sharing roots, water and mineral nutrients as a one, single, genetic individual – certainly a fitting, if a bit sinister, image for such a despicable creature.

" _I have, Meister. I'll be ready to move on your mark."_

"Good."

Beforehand, I had prepared a vial of my blood to act as markers for the tree. I supposed I could simply use my chakra to act as markers and be done with it. That might be the case for normal chakra system, but mine was anything but normal; and if the literature that I had read were to be believed, I would be unable to expel chakra – or at the very least have a hard time doing it – due to my disproportionate chakra ratio. Thus, I had to use the next best thing: blood.

The chakra pathway system was enmeshed into the body. Similar to blood in cardiovascular system, it touched and interacted with every single living cell and passed through every organ. Chakra, being constantly produced and pumped out by the heart, mixed with the blood and entered the muscles and tissues of the body. Whilst the chakra concentration in my blood might be lower if it were compared with the one that was directly expelled through pressure points, its 'signature' was still recognizable enough for my chakra-starved pet plant to identify. I suspected that if I had an edible – normal – chakra system, the tree would have swallowed me whole and sucked my blood dry by now. Strangely enough, the threats that the tree possessed upon my well-being did not discourage me from further studying it; in fact, it only managed to make the enigmatic tree even more enchanting.

"They are bugging those houses, I think," whispered Sasuke whom I forgot was even there.

I deliberately ignored him and marked more positions, my focus impeccable. "All the more reason to follow them then."

Sasuke glared at me, unimpressed.

"Alright, alright. . ." I humored him. "How had thou reached upon thy conclusion,brother _dear_?"

Sasuke huffed and folded his arms. "Well, the adults won't admit it, but the relationship between the village and our clan is pretty bad. I can't remember much of my earliest memory, but I'm sure that we don't always live here."

My brows raised. "Here?"

"In the outskirts," Sasuke clarified. "I've seen our family's old pictures – from the time before we were born – and the house and the scenery are very different. Don't you find it odd that _all_ Uchiha live in one section of the village? Sure, it's good that you want to be closer to your family, but it must have been pretty boring and inconvenient when said family's compound is located far from the center of the village."

I glanced at the boy from the corner of my eye. He certainly was more perceptive than I gave him credit for. Though I would not outright tell him about what would happen, I had long ago decided that I would not lie to him either – only nudging him towards the right direction. Should the massacre commence, Sasuke would be the one who was most affected by its aftermath, thus he deserved the truth, which hopefully would help him find peace.

"Well. . . I don't know much about ninja clan, so I thought it's normal," I admitted. "About the compound's position. . . Well, we _are_ the Military Police, maybe people are uncomfortable with having prisoners near their houses, so we have to be the bigger person and move to the outskirts. As for your second question, the prison _is_ located inside our compound, maybe the decision makers thought that more personnel means more protection for the masses from the convicts, so every Uchiha has to live inside the compound."

"I've thought so too at first. It's not really fair, but it makes sense, so I never ask about it," Sasuke said. "But when I was bringing father's lunch to the headquarter the other day, something that this officer said really bothered me. He said–"

I shushed him before he could say anything. Wordlessly, I creeped into another lawn, decorated by vibrant, grown sunflowers – a nervous Sasuke hovered right behind me. Once I found an adequate hiding place, I grabbed a dried twig and started drawing on the soil. I pointed towards our previous hiding place, where the lights on the house next to it was turned on when it was previously as dark as the night.

Sasuke shoot me a small, grateful smile.

I shrugged. "So what did the officer say?" I asked.

Sasuke's expression turned pensive again, the corner of his lips quirked down, before he muttered in a barely audible voice, "He. . . He said that the higher ups suspect our clan's involvement in the Nine-Tails attack."

As I scribbled more dots on the dirt, I patiently waited for further explanation – something, anything – that could help me measure the extent of the boy's knowledge and gauge his reaction. I turned around when none come and was surprisingly greeted by Sasuke's blank expression.

"You are very accepting of this," the boy accused, a tinge of suspicion laced his tone.

I rolled my eyes.

"As I've said earlier, our clan is this village's Military Police Force," I said. "We have prison built in said organization's building, which inconveniently _is_ also located inside our compound. It's already suck that we have to live in the outskirts, but we also have to live with _dangerous_ convicts. Not only that, we also can't take part in the actual governing of Konoha because as the police force we are required to be neutral. So why does it really surprise you that we are under scrutiny for the Nine-Tails Attack? Haters gonna hate, brother. The sooner you realize it, the happier you will be."

"Are you saying that you're perfectly okay with the mistrust and the isolation from the rest of the village?! We have to do something, at least!"

"And do what, Sasuke? Revolt? We're just kids! Let's say we somehow manage to come out of _that_ unscathed, the chaos would invite invaders from other villages. After a World War, the village can't afford anymore needless deaths and material destruction. Even _if_ the threat from the outside never materialized, the losses would have been so great that Konoha would have ended up like that village you wrote for your homework, what's it names– Amy? Ama–"

"Amegakure?" Sasuke said dryly.

"Yeah, whatever that is." I waved him off. "Like I said, hatersgonna _hate_. Don't waste your time to cater to their whim. You can't make everyone loves you. If this place won't appreciate you, then leave. Why drown yourself with all the negativity? Just move to Ame or something. Be a merchant or whatever. Let's make Amegakure gre–"

"Oh shoot!"

"–at again–" I stopped myself short, finally registering the prickle in my senses.

 _Ah._

"Children," greeted the leader's distorted voice, which sounded more like buzzing of insects than an actual human being, from somewhere behind me.

I tilted my head, noting the existence of thousands upon thousands tiny, identical chakra signature _inside_ the man's body in my mind-eye. On the bright side, I noted, Sasuke and I was harmless enough not to warrant the other intruders' attention; they continued to fulfill their respective objectives.

I mouthed to Sasuke, 'Aburame?'

He blinked. _Yes._

I slowly turned around and came face to face with a black cloak. My eyes carefully trailed up from his barely visible hands, where tiny insects crawled through his _pores_ and hovered around him, ready to attack at his command; to his white porcelain mask – ANBU grade – noting the barely visible glint of his glasses through his mask's eye-holes as he bored his gaze towards Sasuke; and settled on the numbers that hovered above his head.

I stared, and I stared more.

The reason that I struggled to determine a person's exact lifespan based on the numbers that hovered over their heads was because their numbers kept on fluctuating. Infants in the maternity ward usually had high amount of numbers, baring few exceptions that I knew would not have a long life. How they then proceed in life, I theorized, would determine how long they remained in the plane of the living. Some decisions, however innocuous, could greatly jeopardize one's lifespan; thus it was of utmost importance that everyone refrain from behaving like an idiot and listened to me when I told them not to do something, not that anyone ever believed me anyway.

I admitted, there _was_ a possibility that the man was dying, but I quickly dismissed it. Sick person would not be put on mission, especially not one that was as high-profiled as infiltrating the Uchiha compound – the village leaders would not allow any margin of error – thus whatever it was that would end him must be _here_ , right in this compound.

He needed to leave, _now_.

"Whatever you're thinking of doing," I said, " _don't_ ,"

I flinched when I felt his chakra – and subsequently, his shiny, pitch black insects – almost lazily, crawled through his pores.

Amusement oozed out of him; mocking me.

I gritted my teeth. "I know it doesn't make any sense, but I'm warning you, if you _stay_ here, _bad_ things will happen and then there'll be nothing that you can do stop–"

Sasuke, whom once again I forgot was there, quickly intervened and tugged my arm, trying to pull me closer to him. "What my _baby_ brother's trying to say is, we don't see anything, or _anyone_. We are simply minding our own business and will _gladly_ let you continue your," Sasuke gestured towards the compound with a terrified frown, "whatever it is that you and your buddies–"

" _Buddies_?"

I bit back a curse when I felt his chakra surged.

He was no longer playing.

Sasuke stuttered as he tried to regain control of the situation, "W-what I meant to say i-is–"

I clenched my hands and bowed my head.

I could almost imagine someone, somewhere out there, floating in the far out place, laughing at my pathetic attempt to change the inevitable. It was arrogant and foolish of me to think that I had even a _meagre_ of control of this world, to let the illusion of knowledge and freedom clouded me and preventing me from accepting the one ugly truth, that my past life _did not mean shit_. I might have come from a higher dimension, from a place where things were done in a _far_ more civilized manner and where I did not have to constantly fear for my life as I did in this world; but as long as I stayed here, my life was as fickle as the rest of its fictional inhabitants.

Now, my decision to convince the man to abandon his mission had backfired; and with the current political climate, a suspicious ninja was the last thing that the clan needed. Even if I did not do anything, he still had spotted us spying on him, thus he certainly would not let us go. As Itachi had told me once, ANBU did not leave any witness. At the very least, we would have our memory altered and that was unacceptable for me. There was no telling in what someone would find inside my head.

It was ironic. All of my efforts to prevent needless pain and deaths from befalling my clan and I had resulted in just that: pain and deaths.

Perhaps this was the universe's roundabout way to tell me to choose; to show whether I wanted to survive or not. If I tried to act like my old self, I _will_ die. There was no room for compassion, not when the ones that were supposed to be your protector were out to get you.

It was about time that I accepted that this world was _different_. It had a different set of rules and different set of morals. Killing was not something that was that was abhorred, it was a necessity. The old me would be repulsed with what I was today. But in order to survive, I had to adapt, and that meant speaking with language that the people in this world could understand: pain and bloodshed.

Taking advantage of the minute distraction, I slipped my hand into my back pocket and retrieved the blood vial.

It did not escape the intruder's attention.

His insects buzzed, "What are you doing?"

Sasuke stopped his rambling.

With my eyes trained on the soon-to-be-dead-man, I uncapped the bottle and poured its content into the soil before his feet.

"Something that will make you understand."

* * *

Mikoto wrung her fingers together, clenching upon an invincible victim. She then took a deep, _deep_ breath, before she slowly exhaled. She thought of her children – whom she loved dearly – lest she throttled someone with her bare hands due to her mounting frustration.

It would be bad for her children's emotional development to have a convict as a mother. Not that it mattered much, she thought grimly. Itachi had grown up too fast, Sasuke only cared for his father's approval, and her youngest. . . Hideyo. . . Well, she did not – she _never_ – understand what went through his head. She almost missed his company, even when it only comprised of utter silence and staring into the distance. But there was no need to dwell on what had already happened, she supposed. Her eldest had informed her that her baby was getting better and she had seen that Sasuke was more than happy to indulge him – in spirit, if sometimes misguided, of being a good elder brother. Even that ugly twig in their backyard that he had brought home seemed to please him. Mikoto was not a finicky person; as long as her children were healthy and happy, she was happy.

But now Mikoto was _furious_.

Because after a long and exhausting day, instead of her children's warm smiles, she was greeted by the sight of a desolated compound with said compound's wards being breached; Sasuke unconscious form on her front porch; and her youngest son, _by the Gods_ , talking to a bloody _tree_ that she _swore_ was not there this morning, in the middle of the carnage that was her dead aunt's destroyed house, with three mangled bodies hanging on its trunk.

"That son of yours never cease to surprise me," commented the sudden presence beside her. "How come you never told me that he's capable of wood release?"

"Because he doesn't." Mikoto seethed.

Obito folded his hands over his chest. His brow rose beneath his mask. "Then what would you call _that_?"

"I don't know," Mikoto said. She felt her angers disappear, leaving only a hollow sensation at the pit of her stomach. Her insecurity reared its ugly head, because what kind of _mother_ did not know what her children were up to?

"I found surveillance cameras in your house and few other houses," Obito handed her a pouch that were filled with said electronic devices, "haven't been activated though."

Mikoto sighed and tied the pouch to her belt. "Itachi must have lowered the barrier for them to be able to get in. That silly child," she muttered.

"Well, that silly child turns out to be a clever bugger. I've checked the barrier, it is timed to be lowered for a period of time, allowing them to get in and get out at predetermined time. He's good," Obito mused.

Mikoto cracked a smile despite everything. "Of course, he is. He's my son." Even if the boy killed her with his own hands, Mikoto would still love him. There was nothing that she would not do for her children, no matter the cost. The thought brought forth a grim memory from not-so-long-time-ago, a memory of death, destruction, and blood, _so much blood_ –

"Do you think it's because of the Shinigami?"

Obito shrugged. "Who knows. I'm not the one who summoned the Death God to revive my dead child. Like I've said, by the time I found you, you were already dead. Konan took care of him whilst Nagato revived you, and then I returned both of you to Konoha."

"And I'm forever grateful for that," Mikoto murmured quietly. "But I was _desperate_ , Obito. I didn't think things through. It's not like I expect to find my son dead at the hands of own brother." Mikoto really did not know how she went wrong with Sasuke. "By the time I found him, it's already too late to use Izanagi to revive him."

Mikoto heaved a sigh.

"I admit, Kushina's story on the origin of Shiki Fūjin was very vague, but one thing that I _am_ sure of is that summoning the Death God requires sacrifice. And I've given It exactly that, my soul and that of hundreds others. It's tedious, painful, and risky process, but it _worked_. The last thing that I saw before I closed my eyes was my son breathing, and that was good enough for me."

"Then we won't ever know," Obito replied with finality. "Unless, of course, you _get over_ your issue and _ask_ him about it, like any other sensible parents."

Mikoto grimaced at the low blow.

Prior to her son's death – and his subsequent revival – Mikoto could not cope with his deteriorating health, nor could she accept the fact that he would most likely die. Fugaku was worse. He already distanced himself from their youngest even before he was born, when he found out that it would be a difficult pregnancy. Fugaku could not stomach the idea of loving a child only for it to be ripped away from him. Thus, the man kept his distance, whilst Mikoto turned to alcohol. She remembered one memory during her drunken haze that she tried to forget to no avail, where she fell asleep on the couch with Hideyo lying on her chest. Mikoto did not even realize that he had stopped breathing. The fight that ensued after Fugaku – thank Kami – succeed to resuscitate him was one that Mikoto would never forget.

Mikoto had kept their interaction into a bare minimum ever since, even after his revival – where Hideyo's condition had steadily improving – opting to send her clone to take care of her children instead whilst she trained and pushed her body to its limit. Doing Obito's bidding had also kept her focused and her skills sharp, no matter how much she hated them sometimes. For the first time in years, Mikoto felt good about her life. Now, if only she could woman up and faced her children.

Mikoto shook her head. "I'm not ready for him, not yet. But _you_ , on the other hand," she grasped the sleeve of the man that she used to babysit, "you can talk to him."

"Let me get this straight," Obito shifted his mask, revealing his scarred, incredulous face, "You want a ruthless terrorist, slash missing-nin, slash traitor to talk your one-year old son? Have you been _drinking_ , cousin?"

Mikoto ignored his insult. "Honestly, it's nothing worse than over an alcoholic mother who accidentally suffocated him, a father who cannot stand to even _look_ at him, a brother who's a traitor to his own clan, and another brother who intentionally smothered and killed him. If you can babysit Itachi, then you can babysit him too."

"You're manic," Obito deadpanned.

Mikoto snorted. "Well, trying to be a high-functioning person after being stuck inside the Shinigami's belly can do that to someone."

Obito huffed.

"Besides, I have to take care of Sasuke and cleaned the crime scene. The clan meeting will commence in about. . ." Mikoto glanced at her watch, "an hour, so there's much work to be done. Talk to him, will you? And oh, if you could, _please_ ask him to move the tree. It's aesthetically unpleasing."

Before Obito could think to muster a reply, Mikoto had disappeared into her house with Sasuke in tow.

Obito blinked, then shrugged.

What could go wrong anyway?

* * *

 **Thank you for reading this chapter. Thank you for favoriting and following my story. Your reviews, especially, really make my day.**

 **I sincerely want to improve my writing, so all critics are welcomed. If it is possible, please tell me which part you like best and which part you hate, and why.**

 **Check out my other story, "Iridescent".**


End file.
